THANKFUL FRIDAY
Cindy Maddera
I’ve hit a little bit of a writing wall. This is why you are not seeing anything new here this week. I’m leaving Sunday for a science conference and I’ve been spending a lot of energy looking over the program and making calendar notes for the sessions I want to attend. I have not attended a conference in person since December 2019 and I’m really excited to be going because online conferences are a struggle for me. I need to be in a room filled with people who are excited and fascinated with what other scientists are doing. This is where my brain space is right now, planning and packing.
The summer before I started my senior year of high school, I was away at so many different camps that I was only home for about two weeks before school started. There was a time when my summers were filled up with travel. As an adult, that shifted because I was no longer held to school time calendar, at least not until Michael came along. Summers are the only times he can travel and it seems like we fill up every summer with it. This one is no different. We’ve been to camp. We’ve spent time at a lake house. There’s a quick getaway planned in August to see Andrew Bird in St. Louis. Michael and the Cabbage are tagging along with me next week and playing tourists while I play science. I did schedule in some breaks from the conference for myself so that I can meet the two of them for dinner or lunch, as well as some tourist time of my own.
I’m grateful to be able to travel again for science reasons and I’m grateful that I can drag Michael and the Cabbage along. I am grateful for all the travel we get to do in the summer time, but I am aware of how all of my travel seems to be limited to this one season. So I am making plans to remedy this with some solo adventures. Solo adventures used to be a common, unquestionable thing that I did and not just after Chris died. We were both really good at the practice of JOMO. It is time that I allow myself to do these things again without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings by taking off without them.
Look at me, securing my own oxygen mask.