This March was busier than my past two years altogether and still feels like it went by in a blink.
I did still go on making the 1 second videos every day, and amazingly enough, even though so many things happened, it was the hardest month to keep doing it so far. There were days when it was obvious what to include, but other times I could forget about it altogether.
First of all, we went back to work from the office full time from March 1. The next week from March 7 all Covid restrictions were lifted in Hungary, including mask mandates. I did continue to wear a mask in public transport and closed spaces though.
On March 5 I attended a calligraphy workshop, that I was very excited about. It was an item on my 2022 bucket list that is now checked. We learned the basics, now I need to find time to practice.
I finally took some days off in March. Actually I am having four weeks in a row with only three workdays. The first one was the week of March 15 which is a national holiday in Hungary, so we worked only three days that week anyway. On Saturday March 19 I left to London and returned the next Tuesday. I had Wednesday off as well, but that week Saturday was a workday, so still three days. The last week of March I took a few days off from Thursday to next Tuesday, so two more three-day weeks.
London was a blast, I was very cautious to decide to travel again, but in retrospect I am very glad I went, because I needed this change of scenery so much! And I missed London too! It was a perfect sunny spring weather all along, I visited many of my favourite places, took long walks in the city, did some shopping, had coffee up at SkyGarden, saw an exhibition and saw a play at a theatre. More on all of that later.
That particular week really messed up my circadian rhythm, after I lost one hour on Saturday, gained it back on Tuesday, and lost it again the next Saturday/Sunday as we switched to daylight saving time. It was the same day when we had to work on Saturday, so it was quite a week that I am still trying to recover from. On top of it I started having sore throat/cold symptoms that weekend, and it also turned out a colleague whom I spent some time with tested positive for Covid, so it became uncertain whether I can travel home for the next weekend (to vote and be a counting agent at the elections). After almost a week of mild to moderate-severe cold symptoms and two negative Covid tests, I traveled home on the last day of March to prepare for the elections. (Still wearing a mask when interacting people, even if it’s not Covid, viral throat infections are not fun either, believe me.)
On the last Sunday of March, when I started to feel my throat I still talked myself into going for the first run of the season. I only like to go out running when the weather is good enough, so I waited for spring which only came at the second half of March. It was in my calendar for March to resume running ASAP, and since it was the last weekend of March, the last time I could actually make it happen, sore throat aside, I did (let’s talk about the power of putting things in your calendar!).
I read four books in March, all fictions. That wasn’t planned, I like to mix it, but this month I picked some of my reading with purpose. The first one was a period drama book set in the gilded age (****) partly in the UK and partly in the US. I haven’t got to watch Gilded Age yet, and haven’t read much about that period either, but I find it an exciting period of history, worth exploring. Last summer I heard an idea in the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast (favorite!), a listener suggested that whenever they travel someplace, they like to read a book set in that location. Ever since that time I was planning to read Mrs. Dalloway (*****) on my next trip to London, and so I did. It was my first time reading Mrs. Dalloway, I started it on the plane out, and it was priceless reading how the main characters walk through the same routes I walked that weekend and all the great quotes about how wonderful London is. I even took a photo with the book on Victoria Street, where the heroine lives in the book. The third one was a book club pick, and I think the first ever climate change-themed novel (*****) I’ve ever read. It’s the first part of a four-part series, with this one focusing on the importance of bees, painting a dark dystopian future where the bees are extinct. I think it’s an important read, I will definitely check out the rest of the series (I think only the first two is available at this point). The last one was a short novel I read in a day (*****), almost in one train ride on the last day of March. It’s about the tragic life of an all female family whose members served at a castle near lake Balaton, based on a true story. It is the history of the building as well as the people who lived in and around it.
I haven’t really watched anything this month, maybe a few episodes of TV shows, but only a few. I haven’t even finished Mrs. Maisel yet, still on S05 of Suits, so I haven’t started anything new. I was planning to watch a few Oscar-nominated movies too, but never got around to it.
In the last week of March I listened to this new song a lot, that’s when it came out, but before that I hardly even listened to music, not even my work playlist.
I ended the month with a train ride home to my mother’s house to prepare for the elections on April 3. March was great, but I wouldn’t mind at least a weekend of quiet time in April after the turmoil of the past few weeks.
