Traveling Alone
I’m 40 now, and at least once a year I like to meet my 22 year old self again by traveling alone the way I did back then. I tent camp in beautiful places, stay in hostels with students, chat with old men in bars, make cool friends at weird festivals, and am reminded that the world stays as open to us as we are to it.
Playing Irish Trad Music
So extremely uncool for so much of my life that it’s somehow a little cool again? Spend decades learning something you will never be a master of. If you’re a woman, deal with decades of misogyny that still feels somehow like deep love and community. You can sing in the Irish language, which might be the least monetizeable skill on earth yet has earned you many pints in foreign countries. A secret passport that opens a hidden pocket of culture anywhere you travel.
Invent a ghost for your marriage
Who left that cap slightly unscrewed so that oat milk went all over the floor when I shook the carton? Who moved my wallet from where it definitely just was? Where did that ingredient go that was on the grocery list but now that we are cooking is not in the house? I recommend: MARRIAGE GHOST! Ours is named Tom Stoppard, after the departed playwright. Blaming Tom Stoppard makes us a team working against The Ghost Who Messes Up Our Life instead of being pissy about which one of us was an idiot this particular time. (Ghost image is a sketch by my incredible artist friend Nora G)
Folkist Work
This is my slow-pulse newsletter about using old folk practices as medicine for modern life. A combination of personal storytelling (I used to work for The Moth) Big Ideas (I currently work for a think tank) and Folk Magic (I’m a life-long Irish musician with roots in oral tradition) it’s too specific to be for everyone, but might be for you?
