Hello from the floor

It is bitterly cold in Boston today. It was bitterly cold in Boston yesterday, too, but yesterday was full of bright, white snow. Today that snow is grayer and beginning its deterioration into slush. Most of the days have been bitterly cold, with the exception of a couple of nice days the where all I had to throw on to take the dog out was a light jacket and a pair of regular socks, not the thick, wooly kind you squeeze your feet into before heading out to face the tundra. I’m, admittedly, not getting as many steps I would like—it’s just too cold. But I can’t help but feel bad about it! I once heard someone say that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. A pair of snow pants and a pair of snow boots would do me good.

I spent the majority of my day inside yesterday. About five inches of snow greeted us in the morning, and I was grateful to have nowhere to be all day. After a late breakfast and too much time spent on the couch watching the news, we decided to get to work. We hung a painting above the TV, and then I polish the chest of drawers below it. Then it was onto the floors. I rolled up the carpet and vacuumed the wood floors for the first time since moving into this apartment in September. Sweeping is my favorite chore and has been since childhood. After dinner one of us would help with the dishes and the other was in charge of wiping down the kitchen table and sweeping the floors. Seeing all the dirt you accumulate in a day (let’s be honest it’s more like a week) is quite fascinating, albeit rather gross. This is all to say that I love a clean floor. So, hello from the ground.

Back in September, Matt and I moved into a larger apartment in a better (read, not the side of highway where we were living previously) neighborhood of Boston. It’s a two and a half bedroom unit in an old blue house across from a park. Matt’s desk and bookshelves sit in the half bedroom. The second one we’ve dubbed “the storage room.” For the first few months of our stay here, it was home to empty boxes, boxes full of picture frames, neglected furniture, Matt’s bike, and cleaning supplies. Each day I’d finagle my way through the mess for a workout until one day I just couldn’t do it any longer. So I pushed everything to the side and swept away all the dirt that had found its way to the storage room. I finally propped that mirror against the wall and decided that I was no longer going to wait around for strangers on Facebook to buy this old TV console. And that’s how the storage room became a place that’s more suited for enjoyment.

It might not look like it to you, but I’ve been writing. I plop myself down at my makeshift desk and jot ideas down in my journal in hopes of turning them into something more thorough one day. I began my current notebook with the line “This is the start of an essay I’d like to work on,” but, eleven pages later, I ended up drafting the entire thing. This little space, which also doubles as storage for my workout equipment and surplus of kitchen tools as well as all the frames we have yet to find homes for in the new space, has given me a change of pace and has renewed my motivation to write. We hear it all the time—a change of scenery, of space, of company might lead you to something better. And I hope this spot keeps me writing—at least for the time being.

I didn’t make many goals for this year, and I think it’s because I’m happy with where I’m at right now. Sure, theres is always room for improvement, but I didn’t feel the need to overhaul my life. On thing I do want to get better at this year though is reading. I started and stopped way too many books in 2024. The kinds of books that an algorithm recommended to me based on the types of outfit or recipe videos I liked. Those aren’t good book recs, or they at least aren’t good to me. I want to reconnect with literature this year because the books that I did end up finishing last year were capital w works. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and The White Album, as well as Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (a goody if you love Our Town) come to mind. I’m starting out my year of literature with Jane Eyre, and I’m finally hooked after 250 pages.

Writing, journaling in particular, used to serve a great purpose in my life—so great I almost made a career out of it. I missed writing and reading and am having so much fun trimming and fine-tuning all the gibberish on the page. For the past few years I shared some of that writing on this Substack, and each time I sent my thoughts out into the universe, I feared that what I had to say was never worth it. Never good enough, never interesting enough, never readable enough. I’d like to say that this renewed sense of my writing life (another great book by the way, The Writing Life by Annie Dillard) will be making its way back here, but I don’t want to make any promises. For now, I’ll write. Just wanted to say hello and happy new year.