Transitional

Did I really say 2022 was going to "feel about the same" as 2021?  Oh, what a difference a few months can make!

In fairness, I'd said it would be "long and transitional".  And now that I can see more clearly where the year is headed, that much has been spot-on.  But certainly not in the same sense, no.  Whereas 2021 was transitional in a more gradual way that even seemed stagnant at times, so far 2022 is transitional in the OMG IT SEEMS LIKE LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS CHANGING way.  It's not actually quite that dramatic, of course — but even good and necessary change, when significant enough, can get a little bit overwhelming at times.  Right now, I'm in the thick of that in more ways than one.

Of course, it's fun that my blog's birthday is around the same time as the National Association of Letter Carrier's "Stamp Out Hunger" Food Drive each year, which brings me back to my hometown and, in some sense, the same roots that bore this blog in the first place.  But things are also quite different, since I'm literally double the age I was then.  Now, at the age of seventeen, this blog is just a few short months away from being just as old as I was when I started it.

Maybe it's time for my blog to start a blog.  While it decides whether that's a good idea (it's not), here's some bloggy cake:

Still, while there's usually proximity, it's not every year that 14 May falls on the Saturday, which means both volunteering for the food drive and blogging on the same day.  If that weren't enough, the Eurovision Song Contest has been added to my radar in recent years.  And I have friends graduating at Carnegie Mellon's commencement ceremony tomorrow, so it was right back to Pittsburgh tonight.  And good, novel bloggy cake clipart is increasingly hard to find these days.  Busy, busy.

After that, my mother's spending a little time with me here before I help run a primary election on Tuesday.  Did I mention I'm a local Judge of Elections here?  Been that way for four years.  I'm so bad at this blogging thing.

And then it's right back to what already feels like the busiest summer season I've had at my job, even before adding in the two new full-time staff that have been added to our tiny team in the past five weeks.  (One started just yesterday!)  All of the shuffling, divvying, and expansion of responsibilities that entails — while certainly for the betterment of us all — will definitely take a lot of adjustment in the coming weeks and months.

As far as the food drive, though — since ya know, that's what's already happened — you could indeed consider it a "transitional" year as we got our bearings back: Folks remembering that the food drive exists, letter carriers remembering how and when to best get the food to us, us remembering how best to process the intake, and also getting used to doing it all in the social hall and food pantry area of the new church building, a building which hadn't even broken ground when we had the last food drive in 2019, and which by now has already been open for more than a year.  Today, we took in 3642 lb (1652 kg) of food nonetheless — among our lower totals but still an impressive feat — less a super-consistent 3.58% in spoilage from outdated or damaged foods.

So it's good to see that, despite the challenges of the past few years, and those that continue, the community's generosity hasn't changed.

Another thing that hasn't changed is my "pandemic hair".  Unless, of course, you count it having grown a year longer.

It was already pretty long in last year's post-vaccination photo at the age of just over 14 months.  Today, it's pushing two-and-a-quarter years since that last haircut on 27 February 2020.

I'd kinda missed a good window of opportunity last summer before the Delta variant came roaring through, but now I've got some big things coming up before which I'd like to tame it significantly.  I don't think I'll be going straight back to the short hair of the past, but I've gotta get this stuff out of my eyes.  And mouth.  And all over everywhere.  Just gotta find the time first to get it done right.  (Ya know, 'cause "big things" and "busy".)

And the humidity today, oof.  The result is not so much "unkempt" as "unkempable".  Suddenly all those hair product commercials that once confused me as a child make so much sense.

(Maybe my hair should get a blog?  Nah.  Besides, it's "transitional".)