Happy May, my lovely readers. September is grand and the weather is lovely, but in May, with the flowers blooming and the soft Spring rains falling: is there a sweeter month?

My April here in Saint Paul was packed with work, travel, writing, and curling!

Leah and I spent the last five days of the month traveling to California! The main reason we went there was so Leah could run the Big Sur Marathon. I am happy to report that she crushed it! Having run that course myself several years ago, I can confirm it is NOT an easy race. It is VERY hilly, including a two-mile-long-four-percent-grade monster known as Hurricane Ridge. She raced smart and was really diligent about her approach to training, tackling the hills of Saint Paul, some gnarly running weather, and a 16-mile hilly treadmill longrun on one of those extremely cold February Saturdays. I won’t go into great detail (because it’s her victory, not mine), but I am super proud of her and what she accomplished along the Pacific Coast Highway last Sunday.

*Bixby Bridge (aka mile 13) in the distance. Hours before the Big Sur Marathon.*

Outside of the race, we spent a night in Santa Cruz, two nights at the Big Sur Lodge (no wifi or cell service—highly recommended), and two nights in the East Bay. We ate Burmese, drank copious amounts of wine in Napa, forest-bathed in the redwoods, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and weather (every day except race day, when it unfortunately rained quite a bit).

*At one of the vineyards we visited in Napa*

I learned how to curl in April! A few of my coworkers were forming a curling team for Spring League, and one longtime team member recently retired, so I volunteered. It’s a fun activity! I can’t ice skate, and have never tried skiing, so curling felt like an easily attainable winter hobby. I had to take a mandatory “learn to curl” course, which was essential as I literally knew nothing about the sport. Our team has now played two games (11 “ends” if we’re using the proper terminology) and our record is 1-1. My personal play is a work-in-progress, but my teammates are very encouraging, and truly just want to have fun.

I participated in my first Habitat for Humanity home build in April. A majority of the TCHFH builds are on weekdays, which won’t work for me, but I was able to jump into a rare Saturday build. I mostly installed insulation in a home in Maplewood, MN. I learned some skills, met wonderful fellow volunteers, and helped some future homeowner have a less drafty second floor. Win-win-win!

*Shoutout to my buddy Tommy who gave me the idea to volunteer with HFH!*

Things are busy at work, and aside from the regular audio work I’ve been doing for news and podcasting, I had an opportunity to record Lady Blackbird for The Current. Video coming soon, but I can’t get her songs out of my head. What a voice!

My eldest nephew, Jackson, joined the US Navy in April. I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. In fact, the last time I was on the Pacific Coast Highway was when I found out he was born—July of 2004. That time, I was driving back home to Silverdale, Washington from San Diego when I got the call on my cell from his father. So now Jackson is at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes IL (just north of Chicago), which is where I went to basic training too, and where, in January 2001, I found out that Jackson’s older sister—my first niece, Hailey—was born. Excited to have another “squid” in the family.

*A stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway on the day Jackson was born—July 2004*

April was National Poetry Month, and in honor of that designation, I decided to post a poem each weekday throughout the month. I was NOT participating in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month, where participants wrote a poem each day), so most of these poems were years old, but I did write a brief introduction for them, and I’m impressed that I stuck to my goal of posting each weekday. A list of the poems and a link to each one is located at the end of this month’s newsletter. My ultimate goal was to build a bigger Substack following by posting regularly throughout the month.

Additionally, I wrote an essay on empathy titled “I Melt With You”. I spent weeks researching, writing, and editing the essay, and am pretty happy with how it turned out, though it is a bit long.

A few months ago, I applied for a writing residency at Tofte Lake Residencies—an opportunity to spend a week in nature working on my writing project of choice. The application required a writing sample and a description of my project.

The net result of all this writing effort was disappointing. My Substack following did not increase; in fact I got fewer and fewer eyes on my work as the month progressed. I got perhaps the fewest reads/views on the piece I spent the most time on—my essay. And a few days ago, I found out that I was not selected for the Tofte residency. To put my writing goals into curling terms, I scored a “blank end.”

I’ve only been on Substack for a couple of months but I’m already feeling burned out. The popular thing there is “Notes” which is basically Substack’s social media component. Kind of like old-school Facebook, before it was taken over by shoddy memes and Russian trolls, but as Substack is marketed as more “literary” than the other social media sludge, I figured it would be a great place to—you know—write! Turns out that the most traction comes from the social media side of things than the actual posting of written work, which feels, again, disappointing.

Honestly, I’ve been feeling genuinely dismayed about writing for a long while now. There was a time in my life—many, many years—where all I wanted to do was write. I would wake up in the middle of the night, with a voice inside my head saying: “You should be writing more. Don’t waste your time. Write.” Really—it happened regularly. But, I am gradually realizing that a “voice” encouraging me to write is—let’s just call it what it is—insane. In fact, between my going-nowhere-fast writing and my equally abysmal musicianship, I am starting to realize how many hours of my life I have utterly wasted. It feels—like so much else these days—bleak.

That said, I do hope that you are staying happy and healthy and feeling whatever the opposite of bleak is.