2024 in Review: Blogging and a Bit More

This year started off wonderfully with family time on a visit with my younger sister and her partner, who live in Friday Harbor. Back from that refreshing break, I shifted into high gear for the legislative session, which always brings work with tight timelines that requires some deep thought for bill analysis. I love that part of my job so that's not a complaint, simply a reality. My sweetheart and I celebrated our 17th date-a-versary (anniversary of our first date), which happens to fall on the wedding anniversary of my parents. They were married for 68 years so I consider that fortuitous.

In late December 2023 I spent some time writing blog posts and setting them up to publish over the course of January so I could get off to a good start. Having some kind of recurring theme keeps me in the writing habit and for this year I took a run at having a round-up each month of poems about that month. I'll list the top 10 posts of the year below and we'll both know whether poetry draws as many readers as recipes.

January: Started the year off with A Year of Poems: January. Last year I wrote about my Grandma Humphrey's rocker and how I hoped to give it a new life; a local furniture pro took it on and gave me The Rocker, Refinished. Over on Bike Style I did my final post that revisited old posts with Riding Down Memory Lane: January. I didn't rely solely on those pre-planned posts, though; I captured a sunny-day ride to testify to the Senate Transportation Committee in First Ride of 2024. Slow Down captured some thoughts I've come to with time, age, and insight into what works for me. Reruns: January Posts Worth Revisiting was another version of reviewing old posts, both from this blog and from Bike Style.

Unfortunately, ride #2 of 2024 didn't end with me as happy as I'd felt from ride #1. A crash on my bike thanks to black ice in a shady spot resulted in a sprained knee and the ensuing thoughts, Thank Heavens for Kind Strangers and Transit. 

We spent the first 2-1/2 months living in a couple of different rentals while remodeling work continued on our house. Before my crash this meant walks to the park from a different starting point, a new perspective. 

February: Then it was time for A Year of Poems; February. Time sidelined on the sofa icing my sprained knee meant time to read through old drafts and decide if I wanted to finish any. That brought me back to Shared Streets: A Vision, based on a post I wrote years ago when we lived in Spokane. The transit story continued with my experience getting to a meeting in No Thanks to No Sidewalks! Time for another visit to the archives with Reruns: February Posts Worth Revisiting. My habit of collecting poems on various themes as I encounter them set me up to publish How We Get Where We're Going: Transportation Poems, the latest in a growing collection of poems about transportation over on Bike Style Life. Anyone who works with me knows I pay a lot of attention to the words we use. That led me to write Seeing and other Ways of Knowing, to prompt reexamination of common metaphors. 

March: As a word lover of course I own plenty of bike books; I've published a couple of lists of recommendations over on Bike Style and added another one in celebration of Women's History Month in March, Bike Books I Recommend: Women on Wheels. Even more word-nerd love thanks to my poetry reading came out in A Year of Poems: March. My trips down memory lane continued in Reruns: March Posts Worth Revisiting. March also brought A Thrilling Night when I received the Woman of the Year award from the Puget Sound chapter of WTS (Women in Transportation Seminar) International; such a joy to be there with my team and many colleagues! I take a run at #30DaysOfBiking more often than not and I've found some public accountability via social media helps me stick with it so I wrote Just Ride. Every Day. It's That Simple. 

A huge milestone: The remodeling of our kitchen and laundry and a bunch of other elements of the house wrapped up at last and we moved back in. It's wonderful! This is the last house we intend to buy and we're making it ours.

April: The first day of April brought not one but two posts on poetry, no foolin': A Year of Poems: April and Celebrate National Poetry Month. I celebrated the general niceness of people I encounter while riding my bike in Go Ahead, Make My Day and went back to more past posts in Reruns: April Posts Worth Revisiting. I celebrated Earth Day two ways: Earth Day Market Ride 2024 and Earth Day Poems for Every Day. And I quite happily wrapped up a successful biking April, as I described in How #30DaysOfBiking Rolled in 2024.

May: May is Bike Everywhere Month, which strangely I ended up not writing about directly as a thing to pay attention to. Maybe next year; after all, it does get plenty of national press. I added to my poetry collection with A Year of Poems: May and again rode down memory lane in Reruns: May Posts Worth Revisiting. While not a post about Bike Everywhere Month, Bike/Life Lessons Learned does share some reflections on what riding a bike has meant to me.

I got to attend the WTS International conference since I'd won the chapter award. Hehe in New Orleans, it was a fantastic exodus: seeing so many smart, talented women transportation professionals in one room. 

May ended with the fulfillment of a dream I've had since high school: seeing and hearing Billy Joel live in concert. So fabulous to be with an entire packed stadium, people of all ages singing along to every song. 

June: June got rolling with A Year of Poems: June and another collection over on Bike Style, Still Walking, More Poetry. Seems to me just about any topic can lend itself to a poetry collection if you're so inclined, and I'm inclined. I have plenty more collections started that will appear someday in the future when I feel as if I have enough to make it worth hitting Publish. My trips down Blog Memory Lane continued with Reruns: June Posts Worth Revisiting. In an echo of my posts for winter solstice in 2022 and 2023, I wrote Summer Solstice Readings to mark that longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. I decided one of my older posts was worth a refresh and updated If Electric Hand Dryers Were Bicycles.

I made it to Spokane for a celebration of another section of the Children of the Sun Trail being completed. My WSDOT colleagues, city leaders and the neighborhood celebrated with poetry, music, and of course riding along the trail. 

July: A Year of Poems: July opened the seventh month of the year. After fielding a request from one of my daughters to share our family's beloved bran muffin recipe with a friend, I realized I couldn't find an online version of the recipe I have committed to memory thanks to so many batches over the years so I put it out there for others to find in Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe: Best Bran Muffins Ever. I wrapped up my visits to the past with Reruns: July Posts Worth Revisiting.

In July I got to travel to Baltimore for a conference and heard the wonderful Veronica Davis speak, the author of Inclusive Transportation*. I added on a weekend with one of my brothers and his wife and we had a great couple of days of exploring museums and riding a small ferry around the Inner Harbor. If you ever go to Baltimore, know that the Museum of Visionary Arts is well worth the visit and they have a fabulous art museum. I appreciated the easy light rail connection from the airport and transit around town.

 

August: By now you can guess that A Year of Poems: August published the first day of that month. I had enough gardening chores and other activities beyond work that this was the only post for August. Sometime in late July or August my Bike Style blog went down. With all I had going on it was going to take a while to work through the technical issues and restore it so I let it go for a while.

September: A Year of Poems: September led into a busy month of harvesting and preserving—so much preserving that I ended up with highly painful hand cramps at one point from all the slicing, dicing, peeling, coring, prepping, lifting and toting. I captured my various searches for recipes in a series of posts that tell you what I did every weekend: Future Marmalade, Pears, Pears, Pears!, Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!, Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini), and Apples, Apples, Apples!. When I created my own version of a recipe I included it in the post along with links to the ones I made or was inspired by. This way next year after all those chutneys have had a chance to mellow and I find out which ones really turned out great I can repeat the winners and tweak the also-rans.

I also got the chance to return to my former hometown of Spokane for a conference and go on walking and biking tours of sons of the wonderful additions to the local networks. 

October: A Year of Poems: October took me into fall. The gardening and harvesting work wasn't quite done and I shared some inspiration in Keep It Growing: Poems about Gardening. As the nights got colder and the days got shorter I finally gave in and dealt with Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes. 

October held travel I didn't have time to write about while it was happening, from a national transportation safety summit in Houston (really bad transit scenario: no light rail to the airport, a bus ride would take over an hour to the downtown area) to a great first-ever trip to Switzerland for an international committee meeting on transportation in urban and periurban (surburban) areas. I didn't have time to do a lot of touristing but it was wonderful to experience a country where trains, trams, buses, bike lanes, and sidewalks form truly connected networks for a carfree life. My sweetheart did the hard work of figuring out how to get the Bike Style site up and running and restored a backup from last year. Yay! I'd hate to lose all that writing and the memories I captured of so many rides and so much learning.

November: A Year of Poems: November kicked off my birthday month. I got back into bike blogging with Riding in the Rain, Wheeling through Winter: Bike Gear DEFGs (to follow the ABCs) as a long-overdue follow-up to one of my early posts on the ABCs of winter riding. I added to the growing collection of poetry roundups with A Dusty Collection: Poems about Dust, regular everyday dust and stardust too. I realized that with all my "canstravaganza" blogging I hadn't yet captured the recipe I used to make a batch of blackberry apple chutney. I closed out the month with Thanks + Giving: a bit of deconstruction of the word into its constituent parts and some poetry on each of the two terms.

December: With A Year of Poems: December I completed my poetic journey through the months of the year. In anticipation of the legislative session and thinking of the things I've learned along the way in advocacy and public policy, I published Actions You Can Take for Active Transportation: Homework. People tend not to think much about the state legislature until it's in session but some preparation now will help people get ready and be more effective. Listening to an episode of 99% Invisible while I walked in my neighborhood inspired How Many Minutes (by Bike) Is Your Neighborhood?. This year marks my third year of composing a post in honor of Winter Solstice 2024 with links to readings, a playlist, and my posts of the last couple of years.

We spent a really wonderful weekend with my younger sister and her husband at Point Ruston and Tacoma: Delicious food at several local restaurants, a visit to the LeMay Car Museum (yes, I know, unusual destination for me; they do have a few bicycles and did you know several auto manufacturers started as bicycle manufacturers?), and a walk on the pathway by the water, where quotations from Dune are inscribed on the walk because author Frank Herbert was born in Tacoma. 

Toward the end of the year we had a delightful, relaxed couple of days with my beloved sister-in-law snacking and watching Christmas movies, then headed home. I wrapped up the year with an unfortunate bout of some respiratory crud that made me miss the days of masking and no viral stuff being passed around. I get my flu and COVID boosters every time I'm supposed to but they can't catch everything. 

Thanks to being sick and ensconced on the sofa with generic DayQuil and cough drops, all those things I'd planned to get to before the end of 2024 will just have to wait for 2025. That's fine because calendars are a human-made imaginary line that doesn't relate to anything happening on the earth or in the sky. Tomorrow is always tomorrow.

Top Posts in 2024

1. Spokane Blogs: Help Build the List (2010). Note that I haven't maintained this list in over a dozen years since I moved away from Spokane. It's the power of lists on the internet at work, and older posts build up  more Google-Juice.
2. Is there such a thing as a lowercase Nazi? (2012). This one is a reflection on the power of words, inspired in part by "Seinfeld" and in part by my time representing the legislative district that housed neo-Nazis for a while.
3. Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe: Best Bran Muffins Ever (2024). Glad to find this delicious recipe, a family tradition, near the top of the charts.
4. I'm part Dutch, you know: What do YOU wear to bike? (2010). One of the shortest posts I've ever written, and an example of the kind of writing that led to me starting a whole separate bike blog.
5. Walking a Path (2021). My generally serendipitous approach to life, summed up well in this print by Oxherd Boy that I ended up buying for my office.
6. Kindness Matters (2018). Very happy to find this one in the top ten as well. This is one I'd include on a list entitled "posts I wish were in the top ten" if it weren't here under its own steam.
7. Paying It Forward: Why I Vote YES for Kids and Schools (2010). Not sure why a post about a school election from 2010 is so popular, but there it is.
8. Thank you for the gift of friendship: Goodbye, Christianne (2010). A tribute to a dear friend who died that year.
9. Seeing and other Ways of Knowing (2024). Thoughts on visual metaphors and how they leave people out.
10. Apples, Apples, Apples! (2024). Some of this year's harvesting, preserving, and canning.

*You should support, cherish and thank your local bookstore if you have one. Same goes for your local library. If you don’t have easy access, you can use the Bookshop affiliate link to order Veronica's book. If I ever get any commission through such links I'll donate the proceeds to organizations that support equity and accessible active transportation.

It Beats the Alternative: Poems on Growing Older

I was less conscious of my age and the aging process when I was younger. Now when I stand up I may utter a little "oof", and my ankles make a lot of crackling sounds. (Pro tip: Stand up from your sofa or chair without using your arms to push yourself up. You'll be using, and thus helping to maintain, more of your body's strength. Same goes for getting up from the toilet, for that matter.)

My parents lived into their 90s. One of my grandfathers lived to be 95; my grandmothers lived into their 80s. I feel as if I come from a long-lived line and I've had better nutrition and health care than any of them, so it's not that I'm peering into the grave. But I find that some poems resonate for me now that I imagine I wouldn't have found as relevant at 30 or 40. Some poetry can't be written until you've arrived at that place—maybe all of it! 

Most of these are specific to aging as a woman. US society, with its worship of the taut, the slender, the unattainable, begins to ignore older women unless they're famous enough to rate the cover of AARP's magazine. While freedom from the male gaze brings its own kind of relief, ageism, sexism, ableism, and all the other -isms can make for a foul brew. When someone tries to pour that into my cup, I decline. I am just as much me, myself and I at every age that lies ahead as I was in the years behind me. I have become who I am walking a path I'm still on. 

For the most part these poems celebrate, rather than mourn, the passing of the years. I'm sharing a few lines from each to invite you to explore them in full.

"At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor" 
Sandra Cisneros

Not old.
Correction, aged.
Passé? I am but vintage.

"A Face, A Cup" 
Molly Peacock

A break-up,
a mix-up, a wild mistake: these show in a face
like the hairline cracks in an ancient cup.

"At the Moment"
Joyce Sutphen

I thought about the way we’d aged,

how skin fell into wrinkles, how eyes grew
dim; then (of course) my love, I thought of you.

"Days I Delighted in Everything"
Hilda Raz

because surely there was a passage of life where I thought
“These days I delight in everything,” right there in the
present, because they almost all feel like that now,
memory having markered only the outline while evaporating
the inner anxieties of earlier times.

"Senior Discount"
Ali Liebegott

I want to grow old with you.
Old, old.

So old we pad through the supermarket
using the shopping cart as a cane that steadies us.

"Here"
Grace Paley

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

"Doing Water Aerobics in the Senior Living Community with Janie Bird"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

frisky as ducklings, tender as saplings
inside old trunks, joyful
as old women who remember
how good it feels to be buoyant
as geese, resilient as ourselves.

"Hear the Water's Music"
Tere Sievers

There is only one way, aging beauties,
to go down this river,
to hear the water's music over the rocks,

"Midlife"
Julie Cadwallader-Staub

to see
a bend in the river up ahead
and still
say
yes.

"Turning 70"
David Allan Evans

...with my eyes
fiercely wide open, each day seconding Prospero’s
“be cheerful, sir,” and Lao Tzu’s tree bending
in the wind, 

"Starfish"
Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee.

"We Are a River"
William Martin, based on Lao Tzu

Don't accept the modern myths of aging.
You are not declining.
You are not fading away into uselessness.
You are a sage,
a river at its deepest
and most nourishing.

"Still Learning"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

It doesn’t occur to me
to tell her about what will happen.
I flit by as she stays on the wall.
She’ll learn soon enough.

Walking in March: Of Woods and Work

My February walk in the rain forest at Lake Quinault involved soaring trees, mosses, quiet trails, and the sound of water. And guess what—I have all those within a 15-minute walk from my front door. 

Well, technically not the rain forest label. But we're fortunate to have found a house very near Squaxin Park, which offers up over 300 acres of woods, a mile of shoreline, and trails that wind through and connect to offer any number of ways to wander.

Back up over two years ago to when we still lived in Seattle, in a corner of the Top Hat neighborhood with no sidewalks, no big natural park within an easy walking distance. 

When the pandemic struck the state of Washington before any other state, our governor and the state agency I work for responded swiftly. In my journal I noted March 10, 2020, as the first day of 100% working from home. 

In those early days as we pivoted to the online work world we needed to figure out ways to stay connected and stay up to date on the unfolding emergency. Our leadership instituted a weekly call for senior managers. Each call ended with encouragement to make sure we were taking care of ourselves and our coworkers while we continued to serve the people of Washington under enormous strains and shifts. The call often ended with the words, "Be kind. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others."

One of the ways I found to do this was to make that particular meeting a walking meeting. Now, usually a walking meeting involves walking and talking with other people. I had those other people with me via the headset I wore as I walked laps around the outside of our house, carrying my phone so it could count my steps.

This got me moving if I'd been sitting or standing too long in one place, staring at the screen and typing typing typing. It also made me a much better meeting participant. Why? Because while I was walking and listening I was only walking and listening. I wasn't reading and answering email with half an ear attuned to the meeting. I wasn't trying to multitask, which isn't even a real capability of the human brain. I was being kind to myself.

[Side note on my various forms of privilege that show up in this story, including my ability to buy these homes: I fully recognized then and know that my ability to stay home, warm, fed, and powered relied on the work of thousands of people who kept going into workplaces, being exposed to a virus we didn't understand for which we had no vaccine, and dying at higher rates than those of in these white-collar desk jobs. It still does, they still are, they still do, and I don't forget that.]

Just over three years later teleworking is still my daily reality. Our agency goal is to maintain a high percentage of teleworking so those of us whose jobs lend themselves to that format continue to reduce those vehicle miles traveled by not traveling them at all. I could go into the office occasionally if I wanted to, but the building is mostly empty; it doesn't have the "juice" of those chance hallway conversations that enrich our work by giving us a new idea or an insight into a different way of thinking about what we do.

Walking meetings are also still part of my work life. I select a meeting that doesn't require me to view a lot of slides on screen, although I can actually look at those on my phone if I need to. I put on that headset and head out the door. Within a few blocks I'm in the woods, listening with focused attention to the meeting content and resting my screen-worn eyes with the trees overhead, the water below the little footbridge, the offerings people leave at the Telephone of the Winds in memory of loved ones who have died.

Another way I make walking part of my work life while being kind to myself: Occasionally on a lunch break I put on a podcast and head for those woods. Listening to smart people interviewing interesting guests on a variety of topics yields some of those insights, those new ways of approaching a topic or a scenario that I might have gained from a hallway conversation. I listen to some that are quite obviously "about" work, in that they focus on transportation. Others that aren't transportation-focused stimulate my brain with new knowledge. I'm stepping away from that direct task focus and giving myself permission to let an idea or a question simmer a while before coming back to pin it down. 

This time of stepping away is a critical part of brain work. Einstein is famously said to have come up with the Theory of Relativity while riding his bicycle.* The movement of my body through space and my brain coming along for the ride may not yield world-changing science, but it makes me feel better, think better, live better. I'm balanced between woods and work.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.  

— Albert Einstein

Related listening

Don't tell the hosts, but I don't listen to every episode of every podcast I'm subscribed to. This list is a sampling; over the years I've subscribed to others and the list is ever-evolving. What am I missing that you think is a must-listen, and why do you think that? What makes it a good companion for a walk?

• 99% Invisible 
• Code Switch
• On Being
• This Land
• Arrested Mobility
• TED Radio Hour
• Talking Headways
• Short Wave
• Hidden Brain
• The Midlife Feast
• 360 Degree City
• The War on Cars
• Invisibilia
• Autonocast
• The Mobility Podcast
• Hurry Slowly
• Hello Coffee My Old Friend
• Transportation Radio
• Redesigning Cities
• Wanderful: Inspiration on the Go
• Contra* from Critical Design Lab (stopped producing episodes in 2020 though)

*Snopes says there's no attribution for this Einstein statement about coming up with the Theory of Relativity while riding his bicycle. But the American Museum of Natural History included it in their Einstein exhibit so I'm going with them. Their description of how the insight ties to riding a bike makes sense to me: "No matter how fast Einstein rides his bike, the light coming from his headlight always moves at the same speed." Snopes says the statement about how life is like riding a bicycle is a paraphrase of something he wrote in a letter to his son Eduard dated Feb. 5, 1940.

Walking in February: Of Woods and Water

February 2023 brought the opportunity for a weekend getaway to Lake Quinault Lodge in Olympic National Park to celebrate a friend's birthday. Some of the group drove to Montesano with their tandem and solo bicycles and rode the 50 miles from there to the lodge. Others, like those of us healing from a broken wrist who can't cover that much ground by bike right now, drove to the lodge.

As I drove out Friday afternoon, accompanied by the Eagles Live double album, the rain came and went and came again, reminding me with the watery blur and the slapping of my windshield wipers that I was heading into a temperate rain forest. (And, not incidentally, reminding me that I wasn't totally sorry I had to miss the bike ride in the cold grey wetness—cold makes my wrist ache even more.)

Friday dinner and Saturday breakfast meant pleasant socializing with some new acquaintances. We were going to gather again for Saturday dinner, and meanwhile the agenda was wide open for whatever activities appealed. For me, this meant a walk in the woods.

I headed first up the narrow, shoulderless road past the lodge to visit the World's Biggest Sitka Spruce. At 191 feet it's a neck-craning forest giant standing in a spot that felt sad, surrounded by the encroachment of spaces designed for tourists exactly like me. 

I tried to imagine it standing as one among many in a lush, unbroken tree canopy, birds and animals rustling in the brush that no longer grows around its feet, no signage prompting us to go visit other giant trees in the park, no people posing for a picture to put on Facebook.

From there, following the simple paper map available at the lodge, I headed back to the road and across, following the trail to Gatton Creek Falls.

I walked alone on the soft paths, surrounded by so much green! Mosses, mosses everywhere, reminding me of listening to the audiobook of Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer with its rich description of their complex lives, structures, and functions.

Every so often I passed a gigantic stump, quite possibly a mother tree cut down to build the lodge I had slept in the night before. I could not help but say softly, "I'm sorry, Mother." Saplings sprang from each stump to fill the space left behind, fed by their mother's body and watered by the rain falling all around.

I heard a creek chuckling off to one side. A small wooden footbridge provided a place to stop and listen to the water rushing downhill before continuing cautiously across on the slippery wet wood, then on up the hill.

This wasn't a hike to cover lots of ground quickly or get somewhere by a certain time. This was a walk simply to be in the woods. I gazed up, down, around and along the trail. Every minute gave me something to look at.

The very small: Delicate traceries of mosses and baby ferns. 

The very big: Those mother trees, downed logs, and tall trees soaring up, draped in long grey-green beards of Spanish moss. 

The pale: The underside of a patch of lichen, fallen from a trunk or limb above. Perhaps all that sogginess was too much to hold onto? It's so moist, like walking on thick sponges. Weblike masses of another moss shrouding a tree as if I were in Shelob's lair.

The bright: Rusty red maple leaves decaying into the soil, the contrast of a log's interior below the dark bark, pale orange dead ferns.

Life, life everywhere. The full circle, with green springing up from brown, climbing, growing, falling back to become soil again. Walking in woods and water reminding me that this world doesn't require me, or humans, to be whole and beautiful.

The Rocker

Easy answer: Grandma's rocking chair.

The question: "...as I arranged for a few beloved furniture items to be put into (climate controlled!) storage this week, it made me want to know about pieces of furniture that you’ve loved through the years. They don’t have to be fancy, or “beautiful,” or even, necessarily, useful. They just have to be beloved. Tell us about them, and why you cherished it or it looms large in your memory, with as much detail as you’re able to recall or reproduce."

This prompt in the subscribers-only space of Anne Helen Petersen's Culture Study publication led me straight to the rocking chair that sits in our living room, covered with a deep crimson velour blanket to hide the worst of the peeling dark brown paint.

When I was born at St. Joseph Medical Center in Lewiston, Idaho, my Grandma Humphrey rocked me in this chair. She worked there many years as a licensed practical nurse and when she retired they gave her the rocker. Then it went to my parents' house, and at some point it became mine because of that story.

Grandma becoming a nurse is a big piece of what makes the rocker special. She married at 18 to a man 20 years her senior (which was so scandalous they each fudged their birth years a bit on the marriage certificate to shrink the gap). She was the youngest of 13 children and knew nothing about how to live in the world; he had to teach her to cook, clean, run the household. She had three children, my mom being the oldest and only girl. 

When Grandpa H. dropped dead of a heart attack in his 70s she was in her mid 50s. Grandma had never driven a car, held a job, or signed a check—he handled all of that for the household. She was all set to move straight into "old age" and rely on my mom for everything. Mom had four kids at the time (I'm one of the last two "late in life" babies she hadn't had yet) and really didn't have time to drive Grandma everywhere or have Grandma relying on her for all emotional support. 

So Mom gave her a fierce pep talk along the lines of "you can be an old woman now, or you can have a life and be an old woman many years from now. Which is it going to be?" 

Grandma went to school, became a licensed practical nurse, learned to drive, made friends, joined two bridge clubs and a bowling group. She became the woman who taught me to knit and tat and bowl, and always had the store-bought waffle cookies in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry that we called "Grandma cookies".

Mom telling me this story was part of her raising me to be a feminist; she told me to be sure I could take care of myself and never to rely on a man for everything.

Fast forward to 2021. I was planning to sand the rocker down, paint it, and put it out on my deck so I posted a pic on Facebook to ask for advice. In the serendipitous world of social media I got all kinds of strongly worded good advice about how bad that would be for the rocker. It turned out a long-ago acquaintance has another friend who is a rocking chair FANATIC (has a collection of he's-not-sure-how-many). He told me it's an army knuckle arm Windsor rocking chair with saddle joints where the legs meet the rockers, and I had to look all that up to have any design context. He also offered to buy it from me. It is not for sale.

I now need to find a professional to do a really good job of the refinishing, hence the blanket hiding its shabbiness. (This is not shabby chic; it's just shabby.) 

It represents both my beloved grandma and how my also beloved stay-at-home mom raised me not to repeat the dependent parts of Grandma's life trajectory but to make my own way. Sitting in a refurbished rocker will represent my gratitude to both of them for the lessons. Rock on, ladies.

Commitment, Bite-Sized and Tasty

This is the time of year for good intentions. Earnest intentions. Plans to be a newer, better YOU. 

All of which is pretty bogus. You're already you. If you want to start something new to become a slightly different you, an evolving you, why wait until January 1? 

On the other hand, the middle of winter may feel like a really bad time to try something new. In my part of the world the air feels cold, the sky looms grey overhead, somehow lower than in summer—or is that just the fog and mist? 

I don't know about you, but I feel like starting new things in spring, when the days are getting longer and the air feels fresh, or in fall, when childhood memories of back to school shopping make me long for new pencils even though I don't like writing with pencils. 

And why oh why are resolutions always about things that feel like work? What would be wrong with resolving to do something pleasant or restful or just plain fun on some regular schedule?

On top of that the resolutions so often are about going from zero to turbo overnight. Haven't been exercising? Commit to a daily run. Been meaning to start a journal? Get a new one with a format that will stare at you accusingly if you don't write every day.

Before my round number birthday this year I started a list of enjoyable things I could do to mark that number. Then I fell and broke my wrist, and most of the items on that list evaporated as possibilities in the short run.

Fortunately, at our house we laughingly refer to having a "birthdayweekmonth" celebration, because why stop at 24 hours? 

This year I resolve to make it a BirthDayWeekMonthYear. Over the course of the year I'm going to pick some of the things from that list of enjoyable possibilities and try to get to that round number mark. That's all.

If I don't get around to taking XX long hot baths or tasting XX different kinds of chocolate in a year (or longer), I will still have had a lot of long soaks and delightful tastes. What if these pleasures become—gasp!—a habit?! What if through committing to enjoyment I settle into the idea that it's okay to do something enjoyable on a regular basis? That in fact I should schedule those into my days, weeks, and months just as I do trips to the dentist and those pesky preventive health exams?

I had already started writing this when I ran across a Washington Post article by Richard Sima about research on the value of "joy snacks". They contribute to one of the ways we find meaning in our lives. In addition to having a purpose in life, feeling like our lives matter and make sense, reporter Richard Sima writes, "... valuing one’s life experiences, or experiential appreciation, is another potent way of making life feel more meaningful." 

Now, I did start keeping a daily journal a few years ago so I'm not incapable of forming habits. The power of writing things down and tracking works for me, probably thanks to those chore charts Mom used to put on the fridge with the gold stars. So another part of this commitment I'm making to myself is that I'm going to record these moments, these experiences, these joy snacks, these times when I do more of something that brings pleasure, less of something that doesn't. When I look back at a week, a month, a year, I'll remember those experiences. They'll form a part of who I am just like everything else that happens to me along the way.

My resolution: I'm going to fix myself a lot of tasty joy snacks this year. Care to join me for a snack? What's on your list?

Related Reading

• Keep that Streak Going: #30DaysOf Something that Matters to You
• Counting Up the Years
• Keeping Another Streak Going: #30DaysOfYoga
• An Easy New Year's Resolution: Write It Down
• 5 Behavior and Culture Hacks to Get People to Ride Bikes and Walk
• Set Down that Heavy Load: The Things We Carry
• Walking a Path
• How to End One Year and Begin Another
• More or Less
• Year Ending, Year Beginning
• Looking Back, Looking Ahead

2019 Blogging in Review

January: I got the year rolling with a post listing various bike challenges, not all of which I intended to try to complete. Speaking of challenges, compiling a list of everything I read in 2018 was a self-imposed challenge in an effort to give a shout-out to authors who enrich my life with their talents.

February: I decided to make it a lot easier to spotlight authors by compiling my list of books read in smaller chunks, hence the list of books I read in January.

March: I wrote quite a bit more in March. What I read in February, some musings on how differently we would interact on our streets and roads if we all moved the way we do in grocery stores, a round-up of some of my transportation reading (meaning articles, not books), a piece on why someone who owns a bike would use bikeshare, an introduction to my new e-bike Zelda!, and on the last day of the month the list of what I read in March.

April: My blogging energy continued into the cruelest month, sparked by the biking energy that goes with tackling the #30DaysOfBiking challenge. For a while there I thought I might actually do another run of 30 Days of Blogging to go with the biking, so I pushed out a lot of posts:

• Bike Every Day in April — No Foolin’ (#30DaysOfBiking)
• Day 1: Back on the Bike
• Day 2: My Version of a Triathlon
• Day 3: Biking to Breakfast, and Zelda Defies the Wind
• Day 4: E-Bikes Make Friends
• Day 5: Some Days You Just Check the Box. It Still Counts.
• Days 6 & 7: A Little Night Magic
• Day 8: Bikes Are So Handy
• Day 9: A Quick Grocery Jaunt
• Day 10: More Night Magic, with Frogs and Mist
• Day 11: Commitment and Stopping
• Day 12: Finding a Better Way
• Days 13 & 14: Bikes to the Rescue
• Days 15-26: The Twitter Story
• #30DaysOfBiking 2019: The Big Finish

I even dropped in another round-up of transportation articles along the way.

May: Then life returned to normal and my blogging pace dropped. I posted the list of my April reading.

June: Another quiet month with only my list of May books.

July: You guessed it -- June reading list. 

August: I should have blogged every single day of my wonderful trip to Copenhagen and London. I didn't. Too busy living the actual life to record it, and that's not an apology.

September: Caught up on the reading list with a July-August round-up, then posted on the innumerable thankless chores of digital housework.

October: Another "too busy to write" month.

November: Two-month list of September-October books read.

December: Something about the end of the year gets me writing again. I had a really wonderful experience with a great version of #BikeSchool, a Twitter chat I lead every so often, this time with guest hosts and the added tags #MoveEquity #WheelsMoveMe to invite in new participants. I belatedly reported on successful completion of the 2019 #coffeeneuring challenge as a series of bike dates with my sweetheart, discussed how my approach to holidays has evolved (and gotten much simpler and easier), and reviewed my year of bike challenge participation. I wrapped it up with a confession about nonfiction books I've started and haven't yet finished to create a bit of public accountability.

And that brings us to 2020. Such a nice, symmetrical number, that. Here's hoping that I round out this new year with enough reading, riding and writing to make me happy. I need high doses of each of these.

2018 Blogging in Review

January: I started 2018 off with a post on a topic I often return to: Kindness Matters. I was then perhaps less than kind in taking apart some sloppy reporting and misunderstandings of crash data in A Bit of a Rant on Data + Data Rant Continued: What a Tangled Web + Slice and Dice Data Rant: Who's Really Number One?

One of the highlights in January: Attending the TRB Annual Meeting for the first time after years of conference envy created by the #TRBAM content I saw via Twitter. A second highlight: Discovering that my social media work had become data points in a research project.

Kind of a thrill to see one account I created (@SpokaneBikes) + one I managed for several years (@WAbikes) show up in dataset for #biketowork semantic analysis research at #TRBAM. #TwitterSmarter #twitterstorians pic.twitter.com/3Syy887Wau

— Barb Chamberlain (@barbchamberlain) January 11, 2018

February: As "The Grey" continued (what passes for winter in Seattle) I chose to think back to bike rides I've enjoyed and look forward to more with Washington Counties Challenge: A Statewide Bikespedition To-do List, then updated my musings on modal advantages with Bike, Transit, Car: Three Transportation Perspectives from Seattle.

March: Bike challenges get rolling in March thanks to errandonnee and I spent some time pondering the nature of public commitments, which really worked for me this month:
Oh So Challenging: 'Tis the Season to Track Your Riding
Keep that Streak Going: #30DaysOf Something that Matters to You
Errandonnee 2018: The Initial Plan
Keeping Another Streak Going: #30DaysOfYoga
Errands by Bike Are a Breeze (and Sometimes Breezy): Errandonnee 2018

April: Why 30 Days of Biking? (Or More) -- because Surgeon General Warning: Bicycling Can Be Habit-Forming and because Beating the Bus, and Other Bicycling Benefits. A couple of posts on the WSDOT blog about getting ready for National Bike Month: Bikeways Aren't Just for Bicyclists and Clean Sweep: Trail maintenance on the list to prepare for National Bike Month, major events.

Day 30 #30DaysOfBiking: #WABikeSummit done and it was fabulous. Just biked up Doomsday Hill on the Bloomsday course. Wonderful views of Spokane River, more to see as I ride to downtown. #bikeSPO pic.twitter.com/Uzewx0rs5Z

— Barb Chamberlain (@barbchamberlain) April 30, 2018

May: I rolled into Bike Month with a game -- Play Bike Bingo! Great Excuse for a Bikespedition and a report on 30 Days of Biking 2018: Rolled All April. And then it was vacation time on a bicycle tour with my sweetheart, with a side of Reclaiming Yoga.
On the Road Again: Getting Ready for a Washington State Bike + Ferry + Train Vacation

Day One: Southwest Seattle to Mukilteo 

Day Two: Mukilteo to Port Townsend

Day Three: Port Townsend to Port Angeles

Day Four: Port Angeles to Lake Crescent

Days Five and Six: Lake Crescent to Victoria, BC

June: The bike touring vacation continued, but sadly came to an end.
Days Seven and Eight: Victoria, BC to Friday Harbor
Days Nine and Ten: Friday Harbor to Lopez Island
Day Eleven: Lopez Island, a Gentle Retreat
Day Twelve: Lopez Island to Anacortes
Day Thirteen and Done: Anacortes to Southwest Seattle
Bike Touring Northwest Washington State: How Our Bike + Ferry + Train Loop Worked Out 

Hit our first real rain of the trip. That's okay--ride on @wsferries, get dinner at about 5 miles in, then another 3 miles to our place for the next 2 nights on Lopez Island. #BikeTravelWeekend #biketravel #biketouring #SanJuanIslands #bikeSJI #RideinTheRain #BikeEverywhere pic.twitter.com/zFHhGFtR3A

— Barb Chamberlain (@barbchamberlain) June 3, 2018

July: I looked back on the bicycle tour with Bike Tour Planning: (Relationship) Lessons Learned So Far and examined one aspect of what crash statistics tell us in The First Question Is Always WHY? on the WSDOT blog.

August: Too many instances to count led me to write Event Planning 101: It’s Transportation + Accessibility Information, Not Parking Information. In a gentler mood I looked at how my reading habits have evolved with technology in How I've Been Reading.

September: This month was packed with travel to conferences so if you want to know what I was thinking and learning, search Twitter on @barbchamberlain and any of these hashtags: #bikeshareconference #walkbikeplaces #aashtoAM (and check out my November post below). Meanwhile I did squeeze in a call to update our usage in Hey (We’re Not All) Guys! Why I Don’t Use “You Guys”.

Transition zone: Going from.#WalkBikePlaces to #aashtoAM. pic.twitter.com/iWxOWlaSxY

— Barb Chamberlain (@barbchamberlain) September 20, 2018

October: Social media takes so many hits that I decided to provide a different take with A Little Love Note to Twitter. Just in time for the State Trails Conference I published another goals list, Trails in Washington State: A Bikespedition Goal. Toward the end of the month I couldn't resist updating 13+ Reasons Bicycles Are Perfect for the Zombie Apocalypse (and Other Disasters).

November: Thanks to Better Bike Share Partnership and the North American Bike Share Association, video from the national bikeshare conference enabled me to create a transcript of my closing plenary speech in Give Your Power to Truth: What Story Are You Writing for Your Life?. As we rolled into the Season Of Overeating an evening hosting #bikeschool on Twitter inspired Happy Holiday + Awesome Alliteration.

December: We're back into The Grey, although it's strangely sunny in Seattle today with blue skies. Given the usual winter wetness this month I offered up how-to winter bicycling tips in Wheeling through Winter, Riding in the Rain: Bicycling Gear ABCs to Keep You Rolling. My Bike Style Gift Ideas: Three Products I Love and Why I Love Them post is good any time of year -- tuck it away for inspiration around birthdays, Mother's Day, Valentine's, "Just Because Day" gift-giving.... And like many others I put together some of those Big Thoughts for the end of the year in #BikeIt: What’s On Your List? and More or Less.

Looking back on the year reminds me of posts I meant to write (like a list of books I loved this year) and ones I started but didn't finalize, like some thoughts on bicycling in New Orleans from my trip to Walk Bike Places. That's a good one to run some grey day to cheer me up with memories of bopping along on a bikeshare bike through the French Quarter, eating beignets with Naomi, listening to live jazz, and other great experiences. For now I'll leave you with this moment of Zen from a bike ride on the north bank of the Spokane River.