Bluebird day
I wasn’t prepared for the fickle weather in Illinois. Can I be blamed for expecting consistency and predictability from the sun and sky? I'm Californian, after all.
No. 71: Bluebird day
The first week or so in Illinois was hard. I wasn’t prepared for the fickle weather. Can I be blamed for expecting consistency and predictability from the sun and sky? In California, the arrival of warm weather almost positively means the season for warm weather has begun. Here, not the case. On Monday it's 70, on Tuesday morning there’s snow on the ground.
The unpredictable climate here was inconveniencing me. It wasn’t unbearable, but certain measures had to be taken to bear it — put on the winter coat and warm gloves, slip into rain boots, bundle up in layers for a ride on the bike. I was willing to take the measures. I rode, I walked, I went outside. But there was something I couldn’t combat with gear from the outdoor store. That is, the general loss of blue.
By blue, I mean blue skies. I learned a term from my biking friends back in California. If we were riding on a day where not a cloud marked the sky, they called it a “bluebird day.” Because of this term, I started to look up more often. I noticed that in California almost every day is a bluebird day.
Here, at least in this weird in-between season, bluebird days are rarities. More often, it’s a gray sky. Overcast. The kind of sky you might imagine hanging over London, Ireland, or some fishing town in the Pacific Northwest.
It sounds like a minor change, the gray, but the effect it had on me was anything but minor. To wake up each morning, open the blinds, and see a grayness where once, without fail, there was blue — this was a mind-altering routine. I began to feel like a joke was being played on me. No place could have this many consecutive gray days, could it? To which the Midwestern climate responded by laughing, then producing yet another gray day.
I started to panic a bit. Could I do this for another two to three years (at least) which is the amount of time Grace needs to finish her nursing studies? It didn’t help, either, that I periodically scrolled through Strava where I watched my west coast friends soak up the magic of a northern California spring (my favorite season there), complete with green rolling hills streaked with golden clusters of poppy flowers. I needed to define a plan for getting back.
So I got in touch with my financial advisor. I gave him the details. I said that I hoped to purchase a place of my own in California in three years, and I wanted advice on how to do it. His advice was pretty straightforward: keep doing what I was doing. In fact, he said, if I sold all my stuff, I could probably scrape up enough to buy something right now. But that wasn’t the plan. And selling everything wasn’t ideal. And I was the one who wanted to come to Illinois for a spell of time. And so I would keep on, and in three years I should be in a great place to move back to the golden state.
But after that conversation, something changed. My overthinking, over-dramatic, over-anxious tendencies relaxed, and I had a mini-epiphany.
I had fallen into the dangerous ideology that at some point in the future, I will have “made it” and only then would I be happy. I had been missing the beauty that was in front of me, this new experience of living somewhere new, getting comfortable in a cozy house, creating new memories with my girlfriend and puppy dog. I was polluting my joy, and the joy of those around me, by creating asymmetrical comparisons. The realization that I could achieve all that I wanted to achieve, in time — something that's true for everyone — helped me remember that this is the real thing, the present, the thing that matters most, and I didn’t want to miss out on that any longer.
And suddenly everything got better. I stopped making pointless comparisons. I started appreciating the beauty here with the same respect and earnestness that I appreciate the beauty of California, of Utah, of Italy, of France, of Mexico. I’ve come to enjoy this new climate and it’s constant change, for it’s given me things California never could, like reading a novel while a thunderstorm rages outside, the lush scent of rich soil and wet grass, the renewed significance of a bluebird day when it comes.
There’s also the simple pleasure of a life that seems to move a little slower than what I’m used to. There are fewer people here to battle with on the roads or in stores. There is more space and a bigger emphasis on family get-togethers and hanging out with friends and generally doing nothing. This is a place with many middle-class, blue-collar workers, and when the day is done, or when the weekend comes, it's time to sit back and enjoy the good life (a vibe fundamentally different than that of San Francisco and Silicon Valley). My neighbor, an old guy named Jerry, gave me a beautiful vintage road bike and a lawnmower. I’ve stocked the house to the brim with good food, and I cook almost every night. I’m time rich thanks to my remote job. I’ve made some great biking friends. I love living by a lake. Summer is coming. I know, now more than ever, that I want to spend forever with Grace — and that even "forever" isn't long enough. All is well.
And if, behaving badly, I revert to old habits and start to place things side by side, California begins to seem rather hectic by comparison. Will we move back in a few years? Maybe. But focusing on if and when is besides the point. All that’s important is happening right now. Bluebird days are just the cherries on top. ♦
Weekly Three
HEAR: There’s rain, thunder, and lightning outside as I write, which calls for only one song. “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors
READ: The government said nothing about an interstellar meteor that struck Earth until a citizen scientist pressured them to confirm it. Now, interstellar meteor research is beginning and could yield discoveries about distant space.
VIEW: A chilling comparison of a scene in the movie Don’t Look Up and a real Good Morning Britain interview with a climate activist.