Philippe Lazaro
OCTOBER 2016

Kelvin Kiptum

“"My secret is training. Not any other thing""

•••

Kelvin Kiptum is the fastest marathoner of all time. He broke the world record in 2023 in Chicago with the time of 2:00:35.

Nobody has ever finished under 2:00:00. I don’t know how, but experts estimated that based on the rates of how people have gotten stronger and faster over time, it might happen in 2070. But if anyone could speed up that timeline, it would’ve been Kiptum. He only debuted in 2022, running a 2:01 in Valenica, and at only 24 years old, he could reasonably break his own record.

Sadly, he was killed in a car accident about this time last year. The Nairobi City Marathon this year was dedicated to his legacy.

2025, what if

My “what’s in” post last year turned out to be scarily accurate, so what if this year we:

▶️ Sleep in (five times)
▶️ Start making chai at home
▶️ Keep the plants alive
▶️ Sell prints of my artwork
▶️ Ignore social media growth
▶️ Delight in how nuanced and complex people are
▶️ Celebrate TEN Years of being married with a grown ups only trip
▶️ Stop using trips as an excuse to skip running and instead run in cool new places
▶️ Live every day like 2025 was an album with no skips

2024

Here’s to Finland and Pre-Kindergarten and marathon training and trying not to get sick again and freestyle rapping and Portugal-and-Spain and kaya toast with coffee and ducking branches while riding in a truck bed and being the Wario to my kids’ Mario Bros. and dipping in the Essequibo River and Juniper’s lyrics and so many more things.

Amidst all the highlights, there were also a lot of stretches that tested my endurance. The back-end of the year especially seemed to demand everything out of me. But sometimes all you can do is step back and say, that was a tough one, but I’m proud of how I showed up.

Here’s hoping there’s a few things you can say that about at the end of this year.

Rhys' First Passport

Kid passports are valid for five years, meaning the one I got Rhys as his very first Christmas present is about to be retired. (And replaced, of course!)

But this little booklet has given us some incredible adventures, hasn’t it?

Traveling with kids is different. But a love for other cultures and exploring and a sense of being able to do big things is something I want to pass on to them. And I’m so glad we say yes to a lot of our wild ideas.

That Space You Crave

I have it good. I can’t deny that.

I think of how I get to spend my day. The working hours I spend doing things I love… storytelling, being creative. I get to do this in service of climate vulnerable communities around the world. What a treat. It gives me so many opportunities to meet people and see where they live. How they live.

My home hours I get to spend with the greatest people of earth, three of whom just arrived in the past few years. It’s chaos a lot of the time, but also a delight. It’s the family life I always prayed for.

Even in the margins, the moments of play, I get so much opportunity to do what I love. Improv and illustration and running.

I should be enthusiastically enamored with every single moment, right?

Well, if not totally at that level, I should at least be able to recognize that almost every activity that comprises my day is something that I chose. That at one point I decided, “I would really like to be doing that with my life.”

And I recognize that this is a privilege, one that eludes so many people.

So why do I spend so many days feeling uneasy about not getting everything done on time? Why does it feel like I’m often trying to get a task “just over with” rather than sitting and savoring each one?

Is this what happens when you have too much of a good thing? When you have so many ideas and ambitions you’re trying to serve that you end up crowding out the things that make each one special?

It’s a common “area to work on” I get about my creative work. It actually doesn’t surprise me much that the feedback applies more broadly to my life.

There’s a scene in an episode from Full House that sticks with me quite a bit.

Now, I haven’t actually seen the episode or scene in over twenty years, so my memory is quite fuzzy. But the fact that I think about it somewhat regularly must mean there’s a big of, um, emotional truth that lodged its way into my long term storage.

It’s a day when for whatever reason, Danny Tanner winds up spending the whole day with his girls. They visit a cool aquarium, head out on the town, and do a bunch of cool 1990s San Francisco-y things.

After all that excitement, he’s tucking them in at night… most likely in those beds with the giant pencils for bedposts. But in spite of such an awesome day, one of his kids is sad. (DJ, perhaps? Feels like a DJ kind of move.)

Anyways, he asks her what’s wrong, and she explains that she had a hard time enjoying the day with the knowledge that at some point it had to be over.

This is about as existential as TGIF had ever gotten, but it’s a thought that had the air of familiarity.

I’ve been there.

Knowing that what’s in front of you is the best thing ever, but that it’s not gonna stick around forever. It can’t. You know you should be happier about the fact that it’s unfolding right now! That it’s right there, in front of your face. You can’t be any more within the moment. And yet, the awareness that it’s temporary seems to pull you out of it.

What’s a 1990s sitcom kid supposed to do in a Netflix limited series kind of world?

Recently, I found myself unpacking my bags in Paramaribo, Suriname to a clash of feelings.

I was happy to be there, exploring one of the least visited countries in South America. I was appreciative of how much opportunity I had to travel lately. Seeing new places made me feel more alive.

At least usually.

This time around, however, I was also dead tired. I found myself thinking that I wish the trip could be happening at a different time. After I’d had a moment to decompress from a recent busy season.

That night, I decided to forgo an extra opportunity to explore in order to go real slow, read, and draw in the hotel room. It felt a bit wrong, having gone so far and having made it to such an under-the-radar destination, but spending the first night this way. But deep within I knew that this was the right choice that would make the trip as a whole more enjoyable.

Such a decision, and the feelings that led to it, come with a tinge of guilt.

I’m really fortunate and privileged to be able to do what I do. To have work that allows me to travel and to be creative. To have a family life that is able to accommodate it. To have so many pieces in play that allow me to do what I love. I know that’s not something everybody has, and I know that it’s not something that comes easy.

So to take that gift and squander it on an early night in?

Over the past year, I’ve brushed up several times against the phenomenon that having too many good things in one space often diminishes each one. It’s a trend that repeats in visual art, in gardening, and in how we live our lives.

The space in between is important.

The kids have recently reconfigured their sleeping arrangements.

Everyone’s now at an age where it makes more sense to split the twins and have my boys be roommates. The tuck-in routine has a new rhythm.

I have such a wild relationship with tuck-in time.

On one hand, the hours from 6-9 PM are routinely the most chaotic. It’s usually when the kids tend to have the highest energy and the lowest patience for each other. It’s also when the chores converge. Dinner and dishes and clean up time, and on certain nights, bathtime, trash collection, and lunch packing.

After finally crossing off each item, things finally end with stillness. Storytime. Prayer. Perhaps a random conversation or tender moment with one of the kids. And when they’re drifting off is when I remember different chapters of doing this routine. At one, in a crib. At three, in a toddler bed. At five, with a brother as a new roommate. The stillness and sweetness is a strange aftertaste, post-chaos.

And this has been pretty much every night for the past five years.

And then I spend a good chunk of whatever’s left in the day watching shows, reading, drawing, and hanging with Deanna, but in the back of my mind is how quickly the kids are growing and how amazing they are. I want to make sure I’m savoring the parenting journey, knowing that more experienced parents have all said it goes by too fast at a rate of 100%. At one point, I didn’t even know if a family like this was possible. If it would be in the cards for us. And now, it’s the spitting image of abundance.

A stray meme once told me, “parenthood is largely rushing your kids along, trying to get them to hurry up and go to bed, so you can then whip out your phone and scroll through all the photos you took of them throughout the day.”

Pretty much sums it up.

Right now, the most urgent thing in my life is to remove as much urgency as possible.

How many tasks could be enjoyable, if only they didn’t end with the qualifier “by the end of the day”?

How much more enjoyable would the night time routine be if you didn’t feel like you abandoned a work task mid-flow, just to get these responsibilities taken care of, before jumping back in? What if you actually shut your laptop with the aim of shutting it down? And what if allowed you to better remember that this tuck in time is bonding time? A time to meet the kids in their goofiness and to play?

And what if each time you took on the work tasks, you did so with less urgency and more space? What if opening up all the files you’re working on could feel like a musician hopping into the studio, ready to tap into a flow state and get into a groove?

What if the space in between activities, in between trips, in between adventures was restful and open, allowing you to reflect on those adventures properly? And then whenever your next trip rolls around, it doesn’t feel like an add-on, but a whole distinct entree in and of itself. It’s value is there.

Artistic mastery often looks like understanding the value of space. The expansiveness of the worlds created by Hayao Miyazaki not wanting to rush through an exposition. The way Justin Vernon lingers on every single note until he’s good and ready to move to the next one. The way Min Jin Lee took 30 years to work on Pachinko, letting its story span eight decades, and in doing so creating a watershed epic novel. Even in trying to hang up some of my artwork around the house, I recognize that there’s a point of things being too crammed. It’s a line I frequently step over.

Space is sacred. And one of my top priorities right now is to stop overscheduling. To worry less about getting stuff done.

To live the actual moment.

Scenes from 2024

Been wild, my friends.

This year had so many I-can’t-believe-this-is-my-life moments.

So many just-gotta-get-through-this stretches.

Accompanied by some just-wanna-freeze-this moments.

One of the things in life that will always fascinate me is the relationship between difficulty and beauty, and this year drives home that point. Few things came easy, yet there were so many moments that felt beyond rewarding.

Thanks for 2024

What an intense year 2024 turned out to be. So many peaks, some really deep pits, and a lot of gratitude to get another lap on this gift of life.

Thank you for being a big part of my journey. Whether you’re here for my art, climate work, traves, storytelling, an IRL friendship, or just like lurking because those are some eclectic interests.

Made one last longform video for the year. It’s a year that does not lend itself to being wrapped up in a bow, but here’s to looking back and forward!

Josh Gibson

Gibson the GOAT.

In the world of baseball, one of my favorite things from this year was seeing the official incorporation of Negro League statistics into the Major League recordbook, making Josh Gibson the official batting title holder of all time.

Drew this to commemorate. Josh Gibson has been featured in a lot of art, but it’s usually in black and white, or very muted color. To be fair, he played in the black-and-white era on a team called the Grays. But, I wanted to go color rich here. The league was a VIBRANT place to play.

Justice is a Garment, Love is a Thread

This upcoming spring, I will celebrate eight years of work with Plant With Purpose.

Eight years of being part of a team working to reverse poverty and climate chaos.

I’ve seen the organization grow substantially in those eight years, but it’s especially cool to know that I’ve grown as well. In those eight years, I’ve had three kids, seen a lot of the world as a climate storyteller, and learned. So much learning.

I don’t know if one can work as closely as I’ve worked with people who are directly affected by the climate crisis without a fortified desire to take on a few sustainable living changes. One thing I’ve become much more invested in is how long I can get things to last. The way so much of the world has oriented itself around disposable things only makes me more eager to see things hold up well.

The latest model phone is nowhere as exciting to me as one turning seven or eight. Some of my favorite items in my closet include a track jacket, about to turn eight, and a 2011 tee from a nonprofit I worked at.

It’s all about the material, really. And not taking shortcuts. While lower-quality things might look the same out of the box, the difference in material will be apparent in due time. Just ask Major League Baseball, whose “new, performance-oriented” jerseys debuted in the 2024 season to a whole host of issues, ranging from see-through material, jerseys that tore way too easily, and colors that often failed to match.

My senior year of college, I made my way to Portland with a couple of friends.

We were slated to attend an event titled The Justice Conference, featuring a lineup of speakers and artists around the topic of justice. There would be an exhibition hall of nonprofits, interesting art displays, and the speaker lineup included theologians, nonprofit leaders, and even Ben from Ben & Jerry’s.

(In case you’re curious, he used stacks of Oreo cookies to visually show how the US budget for military spending compared to virtually everything else, and all the problems a single Oreo could solve if redirected towards, say, education or healthcare.)

For someone about to leave the university confines and figure out what to do in life, the conference was energizing. Here was a conference center packed with hundreds, maybe thousands of people who somehow found a way to make doing good and solving problems into their life’s work. And they seemed energized by it. They had cool stories and so much to talk about. And sometimes… stickers.

I was captivated by the speakers, but even more,I was intrigued by the opportunity that seemed to be available to those who pursued it: to spend oneself on behalf of the marginalized, mistreated, and rejected. It felt cool and countercultural, while simultaneously being the right thing to do.

There were a lot of ironies inherent with the conference, the most apparent being that justice simply isn’t itself when you make it an intellectual concept. Justice is a course of action that bears itself out in each decision. But, it can be a whole lot easier to make those decisions when you’re with your people and it's baked into the culture. In Portland, that was how it felt.

My thoughts on justice have evolved a bit since 2012.

Hopefully yours have too. 2012 was quite a while ago.

Today, there’s a lot of talk about justice online, and I’ll admit, it just isn’t the same.

I saw some photos shared by Kamran, a cyclist I keep up with, who also happens to be a pretty sharp photographer. He was bike-touring Madagascar and he shared images from the country’s gold mines. Madagascar isn’t a country particularly known for gold, but in recent years, its been producing around 1.5 million kilograms a year. The gold is often found in remote areas, and men, women, and children from some of the most impoverished Malagasy communities wind up working in the mines. The work is exploitative and the worker treatment is poor.

Whether its cobalt in the Congo or gold in Madagascar, I can’t look past the irony of people being treated as dispensable resources in order to source the precious artifact of rocks. It’s like we’ve managed to lose sight of how valuable a person is, how precious life is, and how irreplaceable any individual‘s contribution to the world really is. The photos brought back some of my own memories of talking to brickyard workers in Bangladesh. We’ve really lost our way when it comes how to treat each other.

This is the sort of thing that gets me angry. That’s supposed to get you angry. It reminds me of that stirring I felt in high school, when documentaries introduced me to the unthinkable reality of children conscripted in war.

To me, there’s a difference in material, a difference between the righteous anger one is supposed to feel when the humanity of another is violated, and the rage bait the internet continues to try and sucker us into every day. The latter feels like a misuse of a holy sense of anger we were given. We’re supposed to channel that intolerance for injustice into action. Instead, the internet has give our holy anger a hamster wheel.

This winter marks four years since I lost a very good friend too soon.

A great person, who made everyone she connected with feel valued to no end. She seemed to see everybody in the best light possible, and in doing so, made them all a little more like that version of themselves.

Whenever I think about our friendship, there are plenty of memories to draw upon, but the thing that stands out more than any specific event is that feeling. The feeling of being celebrated and valued by somebody else. It was the basic building block of every action she took on, from giving other people rides to taking on office tasks, phone calls and stationery.

That was the material. The material was the good stuff, and four years later, it lasts.

I suspect most changemakers: activists, organizers, advocates, nonprofit leaders, have had someone in their lives who seemed to embody the values of change, justice, and unity, despite having a position removed from what we think of as the front lines. The barber who knows how to listen. The grandmother who gives and gives and gives. The person who always sees the best in you.

I love these people. And I’ve met so many of them around the world. They’re in preschools in Johannesburg. Special-ed classrooms in the Central Valley. Farms in Guatemala. And as they live lives full of seemingly ordinary things, those who witness it know that they are exactly what the world needs.

Good material.

The Justice Conference came with a pretty sweet swag bag.

A cardboard-brown moleskin, to remember all those hot, thought provoking quotes. A bracelet of beads, courtesy of a nonprofit, that was providing jobs and counseling to women escaping violence in India. A sample of coffee beans from Haiti, from these guys who told me about how Haiti used to have a robust coffee industry until US foreign policy ended it. Now they wanted to bring it back.

The item that stood out to me most, though, was the actual bag that it all came in. An actual burlap sack, re-shaped into a sleek tote. On its side, the slogan for the conference that year.

Justice is a Garment

Love is a Thread

One speaker, who I still remember all these years later, simply referred to justice as the perfect relationship between all. All living beings. All creatures. Neighborliness. And this calls for love to be the lasting material from which its woven. You can’t bring forth your macro-level vision of justice if you’ve neglected the core component of love.

When it comes to pursuing justice, I love and appreciate the role of strategic thought. I think a lot of good can be done by concentrating willpower and effort. I know that love can and often does take the form of forcing the hands of power towards some systemic change. I know that for so many people we love, that change can’t come soon enough.

But as we do the work, I think the material matters. There are many counterfeit products that could send someone down a path that looks like the one that leads towards justice, ego being one of the big ones.

But it’s further down the road where we see the real difference in material. Some hold up. Others don’t.

Today, I’m entirely discontent to stick with approaching justice as an abstract.

So many internet conversations about the pragmatic approach versus taking more drastic measures, so many internet conversations about people cutting other people out of their lives because of a clash in views. Because of violated boundaries and trust and a lack of safety. Because of a vote.

I can’t judge any of these decisions on an individual basis. I’m sure a good amount of them were merited. But it does seem like the work of repairing society is a lot less likely if we aren’t willing to attempt to repair our up-close relationships.

I resonate with some thoughts my friend Jordan put out there. Humanity is a group project right now, what with climate change and all kinds of other advances where our outcomes are intertwined. The way forward necessitates strong relationships, and yet we’re moving through a time where it’s easy to fracture relationships with no intent to heal.

Again, I can’t judge these things on an individual basis when some people were dealt an exceptionally bad hand and need those boundaries, but I think sometimes the rest of us mistake those times of necessity for an easy way out.

All that to say, you can’t give to the world what you don’t have within yourself. You can’t fill the world with wonder if your own reserve is running dry. Likewise, the work of justice and restoring relationships in the world is going to take an instinct to repair relationships when broken, rather than sending them to the landfill.

Justice is a Garment

Love is a Thread

In the end, good material is what lasts.

There’s a difference between the righteous anger we’re meant to feel towards injustice and the knockoff material of ragebait.

I think the distinction is this.

The former fuels you to repair relationships. To get people to see each other as human, and then to get people to see each other as intertwined. On the flipside, the main impulse that ragebait stirs up is always to separate. To quickly identify who’s doing it right, and who’s doing it wrong so you can position yourself accordingly. The actions that result are a defensive mood, meant to protect ego. Justice is a proactive posture, moving towards chaos with an intent to repair.

So much justice work is around recognizing what’s truly valuable. Knowing that people matter far more than the shiny rocks in life. Sometimes those shiny rocks are gemstones, other times they’re things like ego and being right.

When I think of my friend, who I often miss a lot this time of year, I think of the way she went through life with a lightness. She didn’t seem weighed down by the cynicism and frequent defeat that takes its toll on people who dedicate their days towards justice. She went about her work in a way that showed other people that they were valuable.

It’s not that she was unaware of the world, its problems, or distractions.

It's more like she was undistracted from the front-and-center work of loving the person in front of her.

Good material, indeed.

Leaving Reviews for 2024

When I travel I try to seek out as many community-based experiences as I can fit in. This past year especially has been full of some good ones.

I’m wanting to be a bit better at leaving reviews!

Having worked on several review-based creative projects, I know how valuable having solid reviews can be for your visibility. But it’s hard to remember to leave them, especially because time around trips tends to be busy. Knowing how people are more likely to leave reviews for negative experiences also makes me want to be better at leaving behind positive ones.

I decided to heat up some tea and make an evening of it. Turned out to be a great gratitude and remembering session too. 

Live the Actual Moment

“Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life. Don’t be attached to the future. Don’t worry about things you have to do. Don’t think about getting up or taking off to do anything. Don’t think about “departing”.”

–Thich Nhat Hanh

I love this Thich Nhat Hanh quote, and it remains so much easier to say than to actually do. But I get it. The key to actually living your life is to be in the scene that’s right in front of you and lock in.

Eternal Sunshine/Boyhood

Dual drawings to celebrate the anniversaries of a couple of the films that left the biggest impression on me.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind turned 20 years old this year, and I don’t know if you could’ve made it through the 2000s as a sentimental high schooler without feeling some sort of ridiculous connection to this film. The blend of melancholy and whimsy that was perfectly met by having Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play opposite type. The aesthetic of a winter in Montauk. The way that sci-fi supports, without upstaging the human relationship at its heart. It’s weird, unexpected, and based on a recent rewatch, it ages pretty well.

Then there’s Boyhood, which turns ten this year. Probably not as widely canonized, but this film landed with me pretty deeply. The fact that production took place over 12 years. I am always drawn in by films that give proper weight to the passage of time and show you those things that are only visible in retrospect over a long period. I don’t know if anyone in film does that better than Richard Linklater. I remember those parting shots thinking, yeah… life is so many things. Hard, terrifying, hilarious, fast… but somehow it usually averages out to being beautiful.

In praise of a toddler-core Spotify Wrapped

My Spotify Wrapped for this year dropped the other week.

Okay, so did everybody else. I guess there’s no need to say that like it’s a personal exclusive.

The past year, from my viewpoint, was one of the best years for music we’ve had in a while. So many of my old favorites came out with new albums, from Vampire Weekend to Gallant to Lupe Fiasco. Hip hop had an especially strong year, especially with late-in-the-year drops from Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, the Creator.

But I knew exactly what to expect when opening up my listening stats.

There, in the number one spot, after such a great year of new music was none other than Brian Tyler.

Who?

You wouldn’t get it from his avatar, a back-lit, mostly silhouetted portrait of his head, but Brian Tyler composed the majority of the 2003 Super Mario Brothers movie soundtrack. And this was a big year for Mario in our house.

Of course, I am currently in that season of life where I share my Spotify account with the whole family. A family that currently consists of three preschool age students. It was actually to my surprise that the Frozen soundtrack was absent from the list, as was the early childhood hitmaker, Danny Go. I could’ve sworn they racked up enough minutes.

Our top song was actually Naacho Naacho, a Telugu dance anthem from the 2023 Indian film RRR that was performed at the Oscars. But it’s one of the kids’ favorite tracks for living room dance parties, so that also counts as one of theirs. Not Like Us managed to snag a spot, just ahead of two Mario songs. I am eternally grateful to Kendrick Lamar for getting into his rap feud as I was ramping up my marathon training.

Amusingly, Tyler, the Creator got the fifth spot in my top artists section. But I’m not sure if that’s due to Chromakopia, or the fact that he has two singles on the soundtrack of the 2018 rendition of The Grinch, my five year old’s current obsession.

Fighting the taste freeze

There’s a term for the reason songs don’t hit you quite like they did back in your teens and twenties, and that term is taste freeze. Past the age of 27, your taste in music is likely to stick. I’ve noticed my algorithms tend to recommend the exact same artists I was enamored with fifteen years ago, and while loyalty and longevity are worthy of praise, I discovered these artists because fifteen years ago, my musical horizons were really widening, and it doesn’t quite feel the same way anymore.

There are a whole bunch of theories why this happens, and I think they all contain validity.

For one, my late teens and early twenties were full of identity-shaping moments. When a song turns into the soundtrack for that evolution, it becomes so much more than a song. It becomes an totem. A means of taking yourself back to that moment.

Elbow’s Build a Rocket Boys will always send me to the streets of Buenos Aires, where I felt a sense of life being an adventure. Band of Horses’ Infinite Arms takes me to a late summer, post-breakup, where I realize that I was simply glad the relationship happened, despite its impermanence. All the spiritual themes of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois album just so happen to coincide with my own spiritual formation.

But as you enter your thirties, your identity tends to be more stable. For better or worse, drastic changes are less likely.

There’s also the really practical fact that my time spent listening to music has really been reduced.

Should my kids be in the car, we’re more likely to be listening to their music. And some of my favorites are off the table. While working or running, podcasts compete for those listening moments too. There are so many good ones. Oh, and audiobooks.

The thought occurs to me that at some point, my kids will surpass me when it comes to their taste in music.

Of course, I’ll have the advantage of knowing what albums from my lifetime have aged well enough to be considered timeless. I’ll be able to put them on to the classics that came out before they were born, as all elders should. I imagine by the moment this time comes around, the list will include A Love Supreme alongside In Rainbows, Ziggy Stardust and DAMN.

But in this forthcoming era, let’s say the late 2030s and into the 40s, the most influential artists entering their peak will more likely be their contemporaries. And it’s my hope that as my role as their dad evolves to contain more elements of friendship, I hope playlist sharing is a part of that. (Or whatever the 2040s technological equivalent of that is).

I think a lot of parents think about the certain moments that they will be overtaken by their kids. The moment you stop being taller than them. The moment where one can finally beat you 1-on-1. The moment where you ask them for tech help.

For me, the musical taste eclipse is the one I think about the most, but I think if you play those cards right, it can be a beautiful thing.

You need to listen to Ngozi Starr. You might’ve heard her on the Black Panther 9 soundtrack…

Ah, hold up. This reminds me of Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. You ever hear that one?

No.

Okay, you’re really in for a treat.

At the moment, as I predict my three year old’s appetite for Blippi’s monster truck song before he even asks, the time feels far away. But we know it isn’t really.

“You know there’s a trick to not factor your kids’ music into your algorithm, right?”

A friend tells me.

She sends me a reel. Apparently, the trick is simply creating a separate playlist for them. You can then enable a setting on that playlist that discounts it from your listening statistics and algorithm.

I try it out. I make a playlist and drag the Hot Wheels soundtrack on to it, followed by Frozen, both 1 & 2.

Within a month, the playlist has gone outdated. My kids are more interested in Danny Go, who I don’t get around to adding to the playlist. I ultimately never do.

I think about this impulse. To want to sequester their taste in music onto a separate playlist so it doesn’t contaminate your own. There are some practical reasons, of course. For once, my Release Radar used to be a very useful tool for knowing when my favorite artists had new releases or finding similar artists. Now it is recommending nine different songs off Moana 2, The Minions Banana Song, and something called Freaky Song by Horror Skunx with cartoon aliens on the album art.

Plus, in those early days of parenthood, you quickly realize how quickly your identity has been usurped by your new role. You aren’t able to get out and have the social life you used to. Several activities that used to bring you joy need to be shelved as your world suddenly gets very small. You take on this role that really has no off-the-clock, and so for many, losing your Spotify calibration might feel like just another part of you that has gone off into the void. You love the kids, of course, the eternal disclaimer is always in effect. But also, who even are you these days?

#OneFamilyOneSpotifyAccount is my official rallying cry.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve embraced taking full ownership of my Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year, meaning showing it off with pride. The Mario-ness of it all.

This year, I’ve felt far less alone in that approach. I saw a friend’s Instagram story. Her kids have been loving Bluey. Who doesn’t?! I saw a vlogger I like, someone pretty big in the Australian punk scene, share his Wrapped, and had been similarly taken over by The Wiggles and Ms. Rachel and the like. And he was absolutely loving it.

“Underneath the fact that me and my daughter made it to the top .05% of listeners to Dance Mode on the Bluey soundtrack is the fact that every morning we had a dance party to the song, and that’s beautiful!”

Looking at my toddlercore Spotify Wrapped, and some of my further listening stats actually paints a much fuller picture of my life than the aesthetic version of the list.

I see Danny Go’s Spooky Spiders Everywhere and think of all the times I drove my Halloween-loving five-year-old off to his new school. I see Squabble Up and think of how after those drop-offs I typically manage to run a few miles at the nearby lake. I see the ridiculous metal covers of pop songs and know that they represent the hunt for entrance music for one of my improv teams. I can’t see Let It Go, without also hearing my two year old’s voice singing along to it. Years ago, I said I was thankful the Frozen craze struck a decade ahead of my time to have kids knowing how incessant that soundtrack was in 2014. My daughter found her way to it anyways, and you know what? It’s actually quite nice.

“I think an extremely toddler core Spotify Wrapped is something to be very proud of,” continues Campbell Walker. “Because, essentially, you have altered the soundtrack of your world to be about them. They are the main character, and damn man, that’s beautiful.”

I see the beauty in that. I see the beauty in the eclectic mix. The one that shows the parts of you that want to dissect Kendrick lyrics is still alive, but it lives alongside the part of you that can nail both parts of Love Is An Open Door by heart.

It’s a banger of a mix.

Counting Countries is Dumb

I know how many countries I’ve been to. Every now and then I recount to make sure my number is up to date. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.

But I also gotta admit that obsessing over one’s country count is a bit of a vanity statistic and it misses a lot.

The number of countries you’ve been to doesn’t say anything about the depth of connection you had when you were there. It’s possible to take a train through different capitals just for the numbers, but someone who spends time in just one of those countries and goes deeper probably has the richer experience.

Also, some countries are simply way more internally diverse and complex than others. Going from one region of India to another can reintroduce more sudden changes in language, faith, cuisine, and economic status than border hopping several countries in Western Europe.

So, don’t put too much into the number.

But if anyone asks, I’m sitting at 56.

Where All That Time Went

I used to worry a lot about how fast time passes. I absolutely hate that feeling of looking up at the end of the week, the month, the year, and being like… wait, where did it all go?

Sometimes you have your head so deeply buried in things that you’re not sure.

I’ve found that no matter what, time passes, and you end up asking where it all went. BUT it feels better to have a good answer to that question. To have adventures and memories and hang outs and shows and projects and simple nights in and good books and ticket stubs and meals you’ll always remember so you can look up and be like,

Yeah… that’s where it all went. And it was really good.