Time rolls on. New day, new job, new people. New ideas, new directions, new discoveries. The next vista reveals itself only after you move—when you jump to the next hex tile on the board and the fog clears. A new cast of characters is revealed, each carrying a suitcase filled with their own personal collection—precious gems, favorite items, likes, dislikes, experiences, hopes, fears, and dreams. If you ask, they might open the suitcase and reveal a part of their collection to you—sometimes opening up new possibilities that you didn’t know existed.

I started the morning reading a technical book… and then the day took a turn. Sometimes the wind starts blowing in a direction, some kind of magic crackling around the edges and sparkling just out of sight, somewhere in your peripheral vision. You can keep walking, steel yourself against it, and stubbornly refuse to bend, or you can turn and let it take you. So I went. And I made a thing. Inspired by David Byrne’s monthly playlists, I’m calling it the Maybe Monthly Mish Mash Mini Mix. Those of you who have been keeping score over the years know that this will probably not be a monthly thing… and I’m ok with that. If this ends up being a series of length=1, well then we will all keep rolling on. The inspiration for this little list is a feeling I’ve been having: a feeling of being at a kind of a circular crossroads… the snake eating its own tail. The present and the past, coming together and moving forward into the future.

Kate Bush is having a moment. I don’t watch Stranger Things, but this song caught people, because there’s something in there that sparkles. The years go by and these magical things still exist… they’re out there, floating in the ether, and they’re still magical—waiting to be discovered by someone who has never heard them. Waiting to be re-discovered by someone who heard the magic once before, long ago, and forgot what it felt like until they found it again.

This past month or two (or five or eight? longer maybe?) I have been feeling more and more like myself. I’ve been leaning in to things that I love, and rediscovering some things that I love that I forgot about a long time ago. It’s something that sort of snuck up on me, this feeling of freedom, like someone handed me a permission slip that I dropped somewhere along the way… a permission slip that authorizes me to be 100% myself, signed by… me. I’ve been worrying a lot less about what other people think. A few years ago I threw out my make-up and haven’t worn it since. A few weeks ago I threw out all my high heels.

None of us are here very long at all. All we have is love and life and songs to share. All we can do is be who we are, and share our precious gems with the others we meet along the way.

I find myself leaning back in my office chair, eyes closed, listening to a recording session that happened across the ocean, decades ago. It’s a working session—something that by all rights I should never have been able to hear. Voices echo over the tape, beautiful and intimate, and I can almost feel the room around me when suddenly the music stops. A start, then another stop, and then a moment. A single word.

“…lighter.”

Just a flash—a moment—and it begins again, and this time I feel the air leaving my body, replaced by a feeling—something like being covered by the lead blanket at the dentists’ office. What feels like years of tension eases out of my shoulders. It’s perfect. (It’s magic.)

You bring homemade mini chocolate cheesecake cups to the secret birthday party at the office. You hope that the other humans will enjoy eating them with the fancy tiny spoons you picked up to go with them, and that the vegans will enjoy the plant-based non-dairy ice cream treats you selected. You put on your new yellow shoes, tucking the laces this way and that, hoping that the other birds will like your feathers.

Once we were children; we roamed like free electrons—impossible to contain. Now we sit, row by row, in the dim light of a bland conference room, bland coffee in our hands, talking about headcount and core competencies, and I look around. I long for the dappled shade of a tree, filled with glittering jewel birds, singing their songs of freedom.

I’m sitting 20 feet away from one of the best string quartets in the world, listening to them practice, and banter, and practice, when they mention hocket—”Does anyone know what a hocket is?” Yes, I think—I vaguely remember learning about that 20 years ago, when my face was as young and fresh as the other faces in the room. “It’s a Harry Potter term,” the violinist says, smiling.