584 million miles further along, and back where we started.
One year of Galaxy Glasses on Substack (bonus anniversary post!)
“The year is like a life - it is later than you think, the main business over and done with before you fully begin.” — John Updike
The earth travels around the sun at an average pace of 66,600 miles per hour, which feels fast, even if I can’t actually feel it moving. Every 365 days it has traveled 584 million miles further, and yet ends up right back where it started. Still spinning on its axis, still 93 million miles from the sun, still in an obscure arm of the Milky Way galaxy in the relatively small Local Group in the outskirts of the Virgo Galactic Supercluster.
And still covered with creatures — tiny to the point of cosmic invisibility — breathing in its oxygen and drinking its water and wondering why all the spinning and circling. Each time earth returns to this same little square of empty, lonely space these creatures blast fireworks, drop confetti and blow air through tubes that make loud kazoo-like noises and sprout streamers off the end. An outside observer might wonder at this. They might suppose, after reflection, that this spot, after enough orbits, might start feeling like a long lost friend. They might not be that far wrong.
Though it’s a somewhat dreary day in Chicago today, I feel like dropping a little confetti myself. Not just because the Michigan Wolverines won the college football national championship this week, nor just because we’ve finally got some real winter weather on the way (though both of these are certainly worth a noise maker or two!). But more because this day makes one orbit of me posting on Substack - one year of Galaxy Glasses!
A little thing, but still exciting. Like warm dry socks after a hike in the mush. Thanks for being along for the ride!
This is probably a time where I should have something deep and insightful to say. A time when I should propose an original toast, showing the progress we’ve made, and ushering us forward to greater, more substantial heights.
But that’s too much pressure. I sat down to write and ended up with more false starts than my 0-9 middle school football team. So instead, here’s a slightly cliché but at least honest list of things I’m feeling on this momentous day.
I’m super grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts, super grateful for the support of my subscribers, grateful for the excuse and pressure to keep wrestling sentences into place on the page.
Sometimes I’m not sure I’ve made progress - more often than not it feels like I’m right back where I started. I’m apprehensive about whether this writing will mean anything, turn into anything, be, in my little human sense, worthwhile. Impactful. But when I remember that earth’s been doing the same thing for billions of years, I suppose I can take a breath, and know it’s good to be moving, even if not at 66,600 mile per hour.
I don’t know if the earth feels a little exhausted when it completes an orbit, but I know I sure do. Physics says that the earth just does what it’s supposed to do, following the path of least action and all. So some might suggest it’s not that hard. But I don’t know - seems hard to me. Though progressing through one year is inevitable, it still is effortful - as in full of hard, laboring effort.
I’ve sometimes wondered why we make such a big deal of anniversaries: weddings, birthdays, New Year’s day. But this effort-full-ness is probably as good a reason as any. We’ve persevered with our planet through another cycle, a cosmic beat that provides a sort of rhythm and music to it all. Cycles are in our twisting DNA, waking and sleeping, birth and death. From dust we are made, and to dust we return.
Or maybe it’s to dust we return, but from dust we also spring. I already mentioned it’s one of those 34 degree days where the precipitation seems somewhere in between rain and snow and you oscillate between inverted umbrella and drenched snow coat — wet or wind, pick your poison. But it’s also a day when I saw some of the most epic waves on Lake Michigan I’ve seen in a long time. Full of power, full of possibility. Just a shift in perspective.
Which is probably the point of an anniversary post. Some perspective. Thankful for the past, thankful for the future, and thankful for this mountain peak from which we can pause and take a look.
Thanks again for being a part of it, and here’s to more adventures to come!