Juliana Moves

Hi everyone. For those of you living under a rock or tuning in for the first time, I’m Juliana’s husband, Patrick. 

I felt both honored and a little nervous when Juliana asked me to be a guest author for her newsletter. If you know me well it will probably come as no surprise that I often suffer from impostor syndrome and, shall we say, less than positive self-talk. I kept putting off or struggling through this very post because, as I kept telling Juliana, “I am fundamentally uninteresting and nothing I write is good”. Am I prone to dramatics? Maybe (yes). Dramatics aside, I maintain that it can be difficult to expose pieces of your personality so openly to the wider world; this experience has reminded me how hard (and important) being vulnerable can be. 

Enough of my ramblings, here’s what I’ve been…

…Reading: I am trying to take a page out of Juliana’s book (pun intended) by simultaneously reading one “serious” book and one fun book. I just finished The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú and am now reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Both are books that make me think, albeit for very different reasons. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my fun books consist mostly of romantasy and, more recently, general rom-coms. My recent favorites have been the first three books in the Rebel Blue Ranch series by Lyla Sage. Swift & Saddled is my favorite of the three but I’m very excited for Wild & Wrangled to be released in April. They just really make me want to be a cowboy in the mountain west. 

…Eating: We’ve been fortunate enough to eat homemade cinnamon rolls twice in the past week. As mentioned in a previous entry, our wonderful friends invited us over cinnamon rolls during the massively fun snow day last week (more on that later). Then, this weekend we were staying at Osceola Mill, a bed and breakfast in southwestern VA, for Erica’s birthday. Our host made us an expansive and delicious breakfast spread, including her cinnamon rolls which “have been being perfected for years”.

…Wearing: Included in this year’s holiday gift package from my mother-in-law was a silly little running beanie from the Mitchmas 5K & 10K put on by Red Coyote Running in OKC. I didn’t really like the way it looked on my end but I ended up wearing it on an extra cold run last week; I don’t think I’ve done a run without it since.

…Listening to: Juliana introduced me to the Getting Chicked podcast and I am now a proud chickadude. The three hosts clearly enjoy each other’s company and have fun conveying whatever running-related topics are on that week. The vibe I get is that they’re all serious runners that don’t take themselves too seriously.

…Trying: Positive Pat! I think that’s pretty self-explanatory but I’m trying to be less of a Debby Downer.

…Thinking About: The Atlantic article, The Agony of Texting with Men. I don’t know if that link will work, but Brendan Leonard (also check out Semi-Rad) mentioned this article and it’s been living rent free in my head since. It was so relatable to my experience texting and adult friendship in general. I often “joke” about not having male friends or the difficulty of having adult friends so this article definitely made me do some self-reflection. (To my friends reading this, I feel I should shoulder much of the blame for any loss of connection we have, and I am sorry.) 

…Excited For: More snow! I love snow and the snowfall last week led to one of my all-time best snow days. The past two winters I’ve become obsessed with wanting to do winter sports. I look at ski slope live cams from across the US and imagine a world in which I am nordic skiing all season long. To be clear, I have nordic skied once and downhill skied four days total; the idea, however, holds my mind hostage every year. Virginia has the worst kind of winter IMO; it’s wintery enough to make normal activities miserable but not wintery enough to do actual winter sports. Anyway, I’ll just be here in the Mid-Atlantic, dreaming of skiing and fat biking until Spring arrives.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Writing more is something I have aspired to off-and-on for years so maybe this will serve as a catalyst for my own writing endeavors.

May the Force be with you,

Patrick