Detox Tea Talk: February 2019
Originally published on February 17th, 2019
Happy February! It feels like this year is going by so fast. I’ve been doing this little series for a year now, and even though I’ve missed a month here and there, I still enjoy doing a stream of conscienceless blog post every once in a while. Last February, I wrote that the month had always been a bit of a filler. I wrote that I never put much hope in it because nothing exciting usually happened. I wrote that I was craving spontaneity, and I was very ready for March to roll around.
This year, those words could not be further from the truth. March is my favorite month, so of course I’m still excited about it. And I’m also very ready for all the snow to melt and warmer days to return, but the 16 days I’ve spent in February so far have been amazing. Tomorrow morning, I will be in a car with four friends on our way to Oregon for something called KCACTF (Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival) where we will attend workshops and classes and spend an entire week learning more about theatre. When we return, we’ll be thrown into tech week for the winter quarter show, and then February will be over.
As the weeks of winter quarter swiftly pass me by, I find myself wanting to hold onto each day for as long as possible. Last quarter, I mentioned that I wasn’t feeling happy, but I was content. I was going through my classes and my little routines, and I wasn’t necessarily unhappy with it, I just wasn’t excited about life. Ever since returning to Washington after Christmas break, however, my life has been filled with so many beautiful things I almost don’t know what to do with it all. I had a temporary job in a theatre where I met amazing people (and got to sign my name on the wall!). I work with a lot of kids and have multiple circle times. I have play rehearsals, and Thursday dinners, and best friend conferences. I swim, and laugh, and talk every day. I am surrounded by creative, intelligent, and genuinely lovely people and I don’t think I could possibly be happier with my life right now. I wake up excited (and maybe a little tired!), and I go to bed happy (but definitely tired!).
Yes, I do have an off day every once in a while, but overall my mental health has been really good this month. The cloudy days haven’t affected my mood as much as they usually do, and ever since I started to prioritize my mental health everything else has gotten a lot better, too. This month has been a wonderful one, and when I start to think about it ending I definitely feel a little ache in my chest. Once February ends, I’ll go into performances of my play, and then I’ll be thrown into dead week, finals, and then spring break. March is looking like it will be another wonderful month, but once that’s over a happy period of my life will come to an end.
Going into winter quarter, I wasn’t expecting it to be extraordinary. If anything, I was expecting to struggle through some classes, audition for the play before working tech backstage, and spend a lot of time alone. Yeah, not the most optimistic. I’m trying to look ahead to a wonderful spring quarter, but I’m also holding on to the last few weeks of winter quarter. The past six weeks have been the best of college so far, and I would even go so far as to say they have been some of the best of my entire life. So thank you, February, for being a pocket of sunshine in my life. And thank you, dear reader, for sticking around while I’ve been out making memories that will inevitably become stories for you.
~ Claira
