I’ve had trouble with conforming to society’s expectations for my entire life. When everyone in art class drew a picture in elementary school, I wrote a poem (in a cool font, I might add). When everyone learned Dave Matthews covers in high school, I was writing my own music. When everyone else decided to use a Mac or a PC in college, I used a text-based Linux machine. When I was asked to play happy birthday for a colleague at work, I composed a birthday song for the person on my ukulele.

January is the worst month. It’s a slog. It’s unreasonably cold (relative to your usual weather). It’s long (31 days). There’s only one holiday (after a couple of months of many days off). But then March comes. And at some point, there will be a temporary warming, a little preview of what spring will bring. And for a moment… all is well.

The secret to eating better was lost on me for years. I tried diet plans, reducing calories, time-restricted eating, the works. What eventually worked for me was learning to cook intuitively. I started to understand what went into making meals: some kind of protein, a starchy carb or vegetable, and perhaps some kind of fat. This is just the formula that I prefer, but could vary depending on who you are.

Well, here we are: we have a new child in the middle of a turbulent global moment. Please welcome my second son, Roshi Cadence Hassan. His middle name, Cadence, has meaning in the musical sense: it usually refers to a sequence of chords that end a musical phrase. But it could also refer to a rhythmic flow (many of my colleagues refer to weekly meetings as a “cadence.”) And as for Roshi: When a Zen practitioner gets trained, they acquire a teacher, affectionately known as Roshi.

Imagine if you arrived and were handed a number. You sit down and watch the numbers scroll through, one by one. You’re #45, and they’re on #17. No problem, you think. It’s a long wait, but it keeps getting closer. But this isn’t what happens at the DMV. Instead, you get a letter AND a number. And instead of watching a chronological path from a lower number to your higher number, you instead watch as random letters and numbers are called before you.