While I was out and about on Saturday, I noticed the sure signs that spring is coming: flowers were popping up, in border beds, in the wild, and in the park:

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share the top ten characters whose jobs I wish I had. It’s a fun topic, but I admit I had to go back to Goodreads to come up with enough answers to finish this week’s list.

If I didn’t develop educational materials, I might want to be:

1. Bandette, master thief and righter of wrongs (the Bandette series by Paul Tobin and Colleen Hoover)
2. Thursday Next, literary detective (the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde)
3. Phoebe, tv script writer (Red Letter Days by Sarah-Jane Stratford
4. Dani Brown, women’s studies professor (Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert)
5. Phryne Fisher, private investigator (the Phyrne Fisher series by Kerry Greenwood)
6. Nina Hill, bookseller (The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Alli Waxman)
7. Tuesday Mooney, philanthropy leads researcher (Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Rannicula)
8. Kate, local journalist (The Lido by Libby Page)
9. Lola Woodby, retrieval specialist (the Discreet Retrieval Agency series by Maia Chance)
10. Vianne Rocher, chocolatier (Chocolat by Joanne Harris)

How about you? Are there characters from your reading whose career paths you envy for one reason or another?

I write a lot of posts that I get a paragraph or two into and then delete. Mostly, they’re self-indulgent journal entries that belong in the pages of a private diary, rather than published for the world to see. Worse, they’re boring and repetitive and whiny, which demands that I purge them, suffocate before they gain enough oxygen to exist in the world on their own.

But I’m starting to wonder if, in an effort not to gripe in a place that guarantees my complaints will live on, I’m also denying myself the opportunity to problem-solve in the way I do best — in writing.

So, I’m going to dig out one of the bazillion notebooks I have floating around the Burrow and start writing in it. Start allowing my frustrations and my dreads (and occasionally my deepest hopes) into the air — where they will get oxygen, but also light. And if I can see a problem, and write about a problem, maybe I can solve it. Or come to terms with it and make it just an inconvenience, rather than a problem.

As I wrote Friday, I’m also going to get moving. Daylight Savings Time returns in a fortnight, and I don’t really care if you don’t like it (kids, pets, whatever). It helps me tremendously to have light after work. Daylight proffers the ability to work in the garden, to walk along the creek, to bike with less stress. I spend too much of my workday sitting (no need to walk to the conference room any more or run out to pick up lunch or bike to work), and I feel it, particularly when my day doesn’t end at 5 when it should, but at 7 or 8 or whenever I just give up on getting more done and switch from sitting on the couch with my work computer to sitting on the couch watching tv or reading. And it’s sure as hell going to show when I get out on the volleyball court with people 15+ years younger than me. If I’m not going to be inspiring, at least I should strive not to be a warning sign. As of today, the sun is finally setting after 6 again, and by the end of the month it’ll be after 7:30. I can work (and work out) with that.

And I’m going to put five things away every day. Not just down, but away. Rudi and I are notoriously bad about not wanting to deal with things in the moment, and they have a way of piling up — and not in a good way. We’ve agreed that we both need things to be less cluttered, but now we need to put action to word.

That’s three goals for the month. More than that and it’ll become impossible to begin. I’ll let you know how successful my inner Yoda is. (There’s a distinct possibility I’ll just smother him in a pile of laundry.)

Today ended up being a very pleasant afternoon, with the sun emerging periodically. I took the long way home from the Cleveland Park neighborhood through Rock Creek Park and captured this shot along the way.

(As best as I could tell where the beam of light hit did not contain pirate treasure.)

I started to tell you about my work week, but, honestly, it’s exhausting to think about and you have your own work week you’re escaping. You don’t need to run into my monsters as you’re trying to beat your own.

I will say that it’s raining out tonight. It’s supposed to rain in the morning and some (possibly much) of Sunday, as well. I’m planning on spending those parts inside, possibly with my book and knitting and possibly trying to get some stuff cleaned and put away. Even small steps will help. There may also be baking.

Tomorrow afternoon and maybe some of Sunday’s will see some drier weather. That’s when I need to lace up my boots (or pull on my galoshes) and head outdoors. My volleyball teammates have indicated they’d like to play this spring, which means I need to think about being able to spend an extended period of time being active within the next six weeks, and being active with 30-somethings to boot. First part of the plan: getting in 7-10 thousand steps every day or spending 45 minutes out on the bike. Second part of the plan: unknown. Third part of the plan: fame and success (or, at least, not letting the team down when we’re back on the court). I’ll let you know how it goes.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. When my brother and I finally connected on the phone after our birthdays, he shared he’d been accepted into his art therapy grad school program.

2. Rudi’s negative COVID result after flying home from Salt Lake came less than 24 hours after his test.

3. My mom sent me a pair of indigo blue boots, which are big enough to fit over hand-knit socks and look quite smart.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?