First published: March 10, 2024 | Permalink | RSS

A dithered image of my mountain bike on a small bridge in front of an old homestead

Coming through feeling sick and just in time for day light savings, which snuck up on me this year. Usually I am watching for it like a hawk, but this winter I was very focused on trying to enjoy what wintriness we got. With less than two weeks from the spring equinox, I am hoping we get a few weeks of actual spring weather before the heat of summer sets in.

I was grateful we got some snow this year, even if we got much more rain and warm weather overall. For a bunch of years of my adulthood (and probaly before as well), I would yearn for spring to come and bring warm weather, but the last few years I've noticed that rather than a longing, I have been asking spring to take its time and stick around when it does arrive. I no longer yearn for spring to come, I rather find myself begging it to stay as June comes around.

All the same, it really does bring me joy to see snowdrops, some early daffodils, and crocuses in people's little curbside gardens (and in some more remote areas of the woods). Today on a bike ride in the Wissahickon I was lucky enough to see those flowers, many buds on the early trees, including some starts of cherry buds, as well as some wood ducks, and maybe some Greater Scaups, but I am not as confident that these ducks were those.

While I am certainy not a birder, per se, I do tend to pay attention to the animals at the edges of domains or ones that are straddling two worlds. I've alwayes like amphibious animals like ducks, turtles, and frogs. As a kid moving around lots of places and with a mix of cultural influences from my family and the places I've lived, I've always felt like I'm only ever at the shore of a space. This has been less so since living my adulthood in Philly and getting deep into the bike scene, and lately the civic technology scene. But I often still have that feeling of existing at the shores between spaces, never wholly belonging to one or another.

This certainly isn't a bad thing since I have found that I have skills in making connections between those spaces and helping to tie them together or to move seamlessly between them (though I often feel clumsy about it). There are a lot of benefits to this skillset/position as well including finding multiple perspectives on issues, learning different ways to solve problems, and ideally to learn the best parts of each space (though that is still something I'm constantly learning).

Once I get through this busy March (culminating in the Social Justice Hackathon April 5-7), I have a few projects I'd like to work on including some Code for Philly project ideas, some P5.js things I've been wanting to play with, and some home projects that unfortunately won't maike it to this blog. Until then I will be trying to be my best duck.

Thank you for reading!