Hey, Diggy: Do you think we didn’t learn much in April, or do you think we were just lazy about writing?

That’s not just the standard boring “post about not posting much” motif.  I’m actually curious to know if this blyrg has run its course, or if it’s the idea of continual learning that’s gotten old.

Or maybe it’s the self-analysis that we’ve gotten sick of.  After all, sitting here at my new (well, acquired-this-month) dining table, with Rocket sitting next to me looking out the window at dogs playing in the heat, I can’t think of any lesson I learned this month more valuable than:

Even if all you have is Diet Pepsi MAX and shitty Safeway ice cream, you can make an ice cream float, because that’s actually all an ice cream float is, genius.

But you didn’t come here for that kind of insight.

This has been a pretty quiet weekend.  My usual crew has been dispersed around the country, and although I haven’t exactly been doing nothing, I’ve had a lot of time to sit and look out the window with the cat.

It’s strange to enjoy doing not much — as I’ve written before, I’m not good at downtime.

But the opening of tennis season led me to start going to bed at like 10 (so I could get up at 6 to play), which somehow screwed with my circadian rhythm, which somehow resulted in my body deciding it wants nine hours of sleep every night, no matter what.

Okay, all this to say: My daily routine involves a lot less stuff than it used to.  I get up, I go to work, I come home, I eat, I go to bed.  Maybe once in a while I’ll have dinner or drinks with friends, or maybe I’ll go to the gym or play tennis or something, but the days in April just kind of sped by.

I end the month in a weird kind of holding pattern — waiting for things to change in my professional life, trying to make sense of the things changing in my personal life, taking some time off from trying to advance my material life.

It doesn’t feel…good, exactly.  But it doesn’t feel wrong, either.

In other words, holy shit, is this what growing up is like?

I went to see the National in Richmond earlier this month.  And one of my friends (he plays music) had never heard them before.  I sent him their new album, and he wrote back: “I should just fucking quit. This band is everything I ever wanted my band to be. I feel both depressed and validated.”

And that, as I told my mom, made me realize that writing is what I want to do, because while I certainly agree about this band, I get that same wonderful/awful validated/depressed feeling when I read a really good piece of writing, like the David Foster Wallace commencement speech or a good Matt Taibbi essay or a great novel.

She said that’s how she felt when she saw the Mark Morris Dance Company.

And the more I thought about that wonderful/awful feeling, the more I recognized it.

I think it’s related to why we cry at really good movies, even the not-sad parts, or why it’s weird to look at yourself in the mirror for the first time in a long time and notice who you are and how you’ve changed.

As I told my mom, I’m willing to bet that’s what it’s like to watch your kids grow up, too.

And I guess it’s what it’s like to grow up.

So, the moral this month:

Growing pains are worth it.

-andy