March Resolution- Cello

When I set resolutions this year, I decided that in March I would Go On An Adventure. But then, I didn't want to, so I swapped with the month whose resolution is Play Cello For 30 Hours. So far, I have got 1/60 of that done, and March is 1/3 over. 

Stringtown, OK, sent my postcard back in a special envelope, probably so their postmark wouldn't get marked over at the Tulsa sorting plant.

I started playing cello in my first year of middle school, but I just learned to distinguish notes last summer. It's hard to stay motivated since my playing sounds really bad. Cello is my favorite instrument, though, and mine glows in the sun. Once I live somewhere permanently and have a consistent budget, I will start taking lessons again.

The Bays

The last year that I lived in Santa Cruz, I was preemptively sad about leaving the ocean. I took a rowing class in the harbor, I took a single surfing lesson, and I went swimming/wading in the ocean every single day for five months. Sometimes I brought my camera and took pictures of the sand, of my legs in the sand, of Monterey, even though I already had identical pictures, just because I felt so lucky to be there. 

And moving away was hard. But I went back this weekend, and I found that I didn't like the traffic and the shops and the population very much. I went to the beach closest to my old house, and ran into my old housemates, which was lovely. I wanted to visit a particular sea cave that probably holds fond memories for every couple in Santa Cruz, but at 5pm yesterday it was only accessible by swimming or by climbing sheer wet stone, so I just sat on the rocks next to it and watched the water. I felt sad that I live so far from the Monterey Bay, but not as sad as I anticipated. 

When I got home, I worried that I might miss the San Francisco Bay someday, so I set out to enjoy it. I didn't enjoy growing up here, but that's not Alameda's fault. It really is pretty. I drove out to the naval base for letterboxing at sunset, and it was really nice. 

I didn't find the letterbox. I did find a huge amount of plastic trash that looked interesting, but it was getting dark and I was pretty far from my car so I didn't investigate it properly.

Little Triumphs

I had a lot of little triumphs today.
1. I sent off my National Parks Service internship application a day early. And, it made me sound really competent and engaged, and I made it out of true things. I have indeed studied Urban Planning and Contemporary Architecture, fixed all sorts of things, and made stained glass windows. Well, one stained glass window. I always forget about my accomplishments after they're a few years back, as though they happened to someone else, and only this week's accomplishments can be attributed to me.
2. I found an old, undelivered piece of mail at work. I always hope this will happen, but the USPS is really good. Right now I am assigned to get all this grime out from the crevices of the mail sorting cases. A mail sorting case is like a metal desk with a metal bookcase on top, and all of the shelves are subdivided with metal tabs, like an alphabetizer. Cases are the worst to clean because there are like 500 of them, so once you've got the last one cleaned you have to go back to the first one. Except no one has been doing that, because the undelivered piece of mail was from 2008.
3. I thought I missed my chance to start my March Resolution on the first day of March, but I noticed  the date at 11:25pm and just got started. The resolution is to play my cello for 30 hours, and so far I've tracked down some sheet music and made the postcard that will get postmarked in Stringtown, OK.
4. I sold a piece of my art for the first time. It was $4 shipped. Only one person viewed it (on etsy) and that person bought it. This is also the only piece of my art that I've ever offered for sale.
5. Reading a website about triathlon training, I learned that runner's feet can't always curl past a straight line from their shin, whereas swimmer's feet can. Runners who want to be triathletes have to stretch their stiff ankles really slowly over time if they want to have good swimming form. I never run and my feet can curl right up. So, without even doing anything I got to be proud of a new thing.

Yesterday I put a coat of paint on my car, and then it rained and rained. But the paint looks great^, and was totally fine. So, that was more "something dumb that I did that didn't have any consequences" than "a small triumph" but I was glad anyway.

^Not objectively great- great like metallic, oil based enamel applied to a giant surface with a tiny paintbrush.