9 Things Making My Life Better This Quarter (Apr.-Jun. 2022)
It’s the best of yearly quarters, it’s the worst of yearly quarters: April is a very intense time at work, as the end of the school year brings final projects and presentations and burnout (for both students and faculty/staff). May is a million loose threads as we wrap up the semester with meetings and scramble to meet deadlines to prep for next year, but it’s also the start of recovery and rest. June is finally having some time to recharge with plenty of sunlight. Here are nine things that helped me navigate these ups and downs:
Disc golf
When I was a kid, the day camp I went to would occasionally have us play “Frisbee golf” with “holes” that were just “hit that tree over there.” It was fun, but, as an adult, I’m lucky to live in a city with a few actual disc golf courses (with these super-cool basket things that hold onto discs). Husband and I tried the nearest course and had a great time, though we quickly realized that our regular Ultimate-weight/size discs were unsuited for the activity. We bought a couple cheap packs of specialized discs (putter, mid-range, and driver), and we’re looking forward to trying them out next time!
Escape the Ghost Ship (escape room/boat cruise/theatre in Toronto and Ottawa/Gatineau, Ontario)
My sister, SIL, and I had a blast completing this escape room that’s on an open-air boat. The boat cruises around the water as you and your teammates solve puzzles and interact with performers. We recommend going at a time when there are only 7-9 players total; we had 7 people on our adventure, so it was easier to work together. The game is supposed to accommodate up to 18 people working in teams of 6, but it seems like even with multiple teams, you’re all working on the same clues at the same time, which we can’t imagine would be as fun.
Neo: The World Ends With You by Square Enix and h. a. n. d. (video game, 2021)
In this action-JRPG, you control Rindo, a teenager who’s been sucked into the deadly Reaper’s Game, in which you and your buddies have to compete with other teams and erase enemies called Noise–or get erased yourselves (dun dun DUN!). I enjoyed the plot of this game and its setting (contemporary Shibuya), and I especially enjoyed the way the game incorporated points from previous games in the series in a way that felt like a bonus if you’d played them but wasn’t confusing if you hadn’t. The battles have a steep learning curve, because you’re controlling every character in your party at once in real-time, but the chaos is kind of the point: it’s lots of fun (and thematically resonant) to figure out how to best coordinate your team’s attacks.
Playing floor hockey!
Due to the pandemic, until these last few weeks, I hadn’t played any form of hockey for over two years. It was really nice to get back on the court and play some games with Husband’s team (which also used to be my team, several years back). Somehow, my shot has grown stronger during the off-years?
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (SFF book, 2020)
I’m not sure I can summarize this book in a non-spoilery way except to say that if you love the Chronicles of Narnia, especially The Magician’s Nephew and what C. S. Lewis called “the numinous,” you’ll probably enjoy this fantasy novel as much as I did. If not, your results may vary, as you can see from the Goodreads reviews. It absolutely is the kind of book where the more you know about the plot going in, the more likely your experience will be worse. A lot of the tension comes from the reader’s theorizing and guesses about what’s going on.
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn (non-fiction book, 2021)
Because I was bombarded with information about anti-Semitism and traumatic Jewish history in day school, I often avoided more of the same when learning about marginalized groups. Turns out, that left me with a) a child’s perspective on a lot of Jewish history and b) no place for the feelings I have about encountering anti-Semitism in my lived experience. This book of essays on contemporary Jewish experiences, including the titular exploration of how and for whom mainstream Holocaust narratives are constructed, helped to validate some of my feelings and teach me more complex history. I don’t agree with all of the author’s political positions, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t learn from and feel supported by some of the other content.
Sometimes I forget that my family didn’t choose to come to North America because (or, at least, just because–I didn’t know them as people) they were ambitious and looking for opportunities to succeed; they came to escape vicious, sometimes lethal, social and governmental discrimination. That doesn’t mean I get to ignore my complicity in colonialism or white supremacy, but being mindful of those matters doesn’t mean I have to ignore my people’s history either.
When a friend had an occasion to celebrate, Husband and I treated him to a session here, the Scarborough location of what seems to be an established franchise of game rooms. You and your friends wander from room to room, playing active arcade games that might see you climbing glowing walls, throwing balls at light-up targets, dodging lasers, or running across colour-coded tiles, to give a few examples. We had a ton of fun, and we were particularly impressed by thoughtful logistical details, such as a waiting system that means no team can “hog” a particular room, very little downtime, and easy-to-use wristbands for signing up/checking your stats.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that, unfortunately, a lot of the games are inaccessible to colourblind folks, which seems like a huge oversight in design–I’d imagine a colourblind mode would be fairly straightforward, though of course not simple, to program into the LEDs and the game selection interface (and/or to tie to individual players’ wristbands).
The Atlantic magazine digital subscription
I used to subscribe to the hard copy of The Atlantic because I like holding shiny magazines in my hands but stopped because I was feeling stressed out about finishing each issue before the next one arrived. Then I felt bad because Pocket let me circumvent their paywall and read way more articles than I was supposed to be allowed to. Solution: digital subscription!
Overall, I like the constant flow of content on the Atlantic app, especially the daily crossword. Originally, I chose The Atlantic because I wanted to stay informed, and I knew they’d published Ta-Nehisi Coates’ discourse-expanding piece “The Case for Reparations”; I stayed because they continue to publish articles like that while also publishing right-wing thinkers whose work exposes me to ideas that I disagree with in their most strongly argued form. This has turned out to be really good for me, intellectually but also mental-health-wise, making space for me to better articulate, support, and develop my own beliefs without subjecting myself to hateful rhetoric or getting anxious or outraged about straw-men.
Getting offline
At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, I developed a whole bunch of practices to move the stuff I used to do in-person to online fora. For example, friends, family, and I organized online activities, hangouts, and celebrations; I used online local farmers’ markets instead of the weekly one that used to gather nearby; and I bought items from stores’ websites for home delivery instead of browsing the aisles.
As the pandemic situation improves this summer, I’ve found joy in returning to in-person practices, even if the online process is more convenient. I place holds on hard-copy graphic novels to be picked up at the bricks-and-mortar library. I go to the outdoor farmer’s market and walk to the mall when I can. I tend both my garden plot and my balcony plants, I go to restaurants with Husband, and I visit loved ones in indoor or outdoor situations (whatever we all agree is comfortable). When it’s time to go do one of these things, I can’t deny that I usually wish I’d chosen the online version–what do you mean I have to get dressed and swap my orthotics into sturdy shoes and put on sunscreen and walk or take the subway?–but I also can’t deny that actually going places feels better afterwards than sitting in front of my computer.