I asked my younger sister what I should write about. She said ‘snow’. I thought that was fitting because her vibe on this trip has been reminding me of snow- in some ways. She told me she recently committed to approaching things playfully. Snow feels light and playful.
We grew up with 24/7 sun and no seasons. We like the snow. Snow is novel to us.
I love novelty. I eat it up and can’t seem to get enough of it. I love the combination of novelty and constants (same people, family, etc). If I go too long without novelty I don't feel alive anymore because I get too comfortable. Comfort is great in small doses and ironically uncomfortable in abundance. In large doses novelty is overwhelming in the short term but gratifying in the long term. Novelty is an efficient way to learn and grow. These days I go out of my way to seek novelty.
A few years ago I thought I didn’t want novelty. I thought I wanted to stay in my comfort zone for the rest of my life. I thought I wanted it so much that I did it. I dropped everything hard in my life for 5 months. The first month or two was amazing. Then I hated it. I learned that I like to feel like I’m progressing in some way. I think most people do. I observed something else in those 5 months: My comfort zone shrank. 4 months deep into constant gaming and gluttony I found myself getting anxious over activities I wouldn’t have thought twice about before. If you’re constantly pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, it grows. You’re suddenly comfortable with things you weren’t before. I’ve always felt a sense of comfort in the snow, despite it being novel to me.
I feel like a child when I experience heavy snowfall (so heavy that you’ll get wet if you go outside). I’m not quite sure how snow physically behaves. I’m in awe when I pick up soft snow and it turns hard when I pack it tightly into a ball. I jump to grab thinner tree branches to see the volume of snow that falls off them and softly thumps the snow below. I close my eyes to hear the sound of the snowflakes hitting my black Northface puffer. I open my eyes to observe the individuality of every single snowflake resting on the same jacket.
The snow amplifies all color around it. It reflects the sun's light, essentially shining a spotlight on things that aren't covered in snow. It makes people feel brighter and more pronounced-somehow more alive: Like characters from a book.
The snow muffles dull background noise. You don’t hear the hum of the highway or voices in the distance. Local sounds are brighter and more pronounced. They’re not amplified, because the snow doesn’t discriminate on which sounds it muffles. Relatively, your local environment is quieter so any sound within it feels more dramatic. Every word and action feels sharper in the snow.
New Year’s Resolution:
Usually I don’t have a specific new year’s resolution because I’m almost always on some self-improvement BS anyways. This year one occurred to me when I was in the snow: act quickly with conviction; intelligently.
I tend to have a bias towards thinking instead of acting. I’ve observed that luck tends to find the people who have a bias toward action, so I want to start acting more and thinking less.