Spring seems to have arrived.

Or at least Michigan has begun making preliminary claims in that direction.

Last weekend I made dubai chewy cookies at home. After enough kneading and fiddling, they more or less acquired the correct shape and texture, although they were far too rich, so I may try again and make them slightly more respectable.

The funniest part was realising that my body now appears to object to dessert in real time. I ate one, felt my blood sugar shoot up, brushed my teeth, washed up, went to bed—and then later ate another one and repeated the entire process.

Bravo, my life.

The weather has finally softened enough that I no longer need the heater during my commute, although naturally snow is forecast again for the weekend. This sort of betrayal is familiar to anyone who has lived in the eastern half of the United States. Once things warm up properly, I’d like to go somewhere for a reset—maybe Colorado, which Peter recommended, or Canada.

A reset would be useful.

For the past month or two, work has felt less like ordinary corporate life and more like appearing repeatedly before an audit committee that does not technically exist. Nothing as dramatic as an actual lawsuit—just endless explaining, evidence gathering, document surgery, percentage allocation, and answering the same question in several slightly altered forms.

There have also been enough unreasonable situations to confirm an old theory of mine: unreasonable events are usually produced by unreasonable people, who then become remarkably unavailable once the consequences arrive.

Some people have understood what was happening and supported me completely. Others have perfected that corporate expression in which the eyes remain technically open while seeing absolutely nothing.

It has been exhausting, but I have also learned an absurd amount for someone who has only been here five months.

I talked a big logistics game during the interview, so naturally I ended up handling the customer-supplied material.

I happened to be seated directly in front of Purchasing, which had previously been my customer.

I happened to have some AP experience, so what began as “I’ll just help close this out” increasingly looks like “I will apparently finish the entire thing.”

At this point I may simply change my name to Lee Ha-pil—Ms. “By Some Coincidence.”

I should have lied during the interview and said I built batteries at home for fun. Maybe they would have put me in Production.

Still, most of that is outside my control, and amid all the chaos I genuinely enjoy the people in my department. I had assumed office life here might mean quietly staring into a monitor all day, but there are enough Koreans around that I never feel socially stranded. I have developed a very private affection for my team and the people in my part.

The women in my group remind me slightly of princesses from tiny independent kingdoms: particular, slightly prim, and extremely funny.

One of them once said she could not see a man romantically if he had never learned Calculus III.

I found this so refined that I nearly admired it as a moral principle.

One lunchtime I went to the post office, and because the weather had finally warmed, the grass was beginning to come up bright green again. Holland starts looking almost offensively charming around this time of year—tiny-town heaven slowly reassembling itself after winter. Someone in a meeting even told us to go outside and enjoy the good air.

Very nice.

VERY nice.

At the moment, life feels roughly seven parts very good and three parts very bad, except both sides are operating at maximum intensity, which makes the arithmetic less reassuring than it sounds. I suppose I’ll have to learn how to balance them.

A hammock for the terrace is coming soon.

That should solve at least one category of problem.

The more encouraging change is that I’m also getting more chances to say what I think at work. The more I understand, the more room I have to negotiate, adjust, and respond instead of simply receiving whatever happens.

Business, innit.

Then March reached its halfway point almost without permission.

At the beginning of the year I had made sixty-four Mandal-art goals, so technically I should have progressed through sixteen of them by now. Quantitatively, the evidence is weak. I have not lost a dramatic amount of weight. I have not become extraordinarily rich.

But subjectively, something has shifted in a very positive direction.

Last week I thought spring had finally arrived and imagined a leisurely warm weekend. Naturally, it got cold again.

The insects at the factory have begun emerging from wherever they spent winter, but the weather itself remains unconvinced.

At lunch, one of my coworkers mentioned that she was going skiing in Colorado. I asked whether this was even skiing season, and she looked at me as though I had asked whether snow was involved.

Apparently this is prime time.

And she is not talking about pleasantly gliding down a groomed resort slope. She actually skis in the mountains.

Properly.

She can explain, in alarming detail, how the temperature changes the snowpack and how icy or slippery a mountain route will be.

A genuine wilderness person.

That day the cafeteria served yukgaejang, which she was happily eating, so I taught her that if she ever visits rural Korea and cheerfully says, “Han geureut juseyo”—one bowl, please—someone may like her enough to give her two.

This somehow led us to talking about Holland’s tulip run.

Apparently the company sponsors a race, and an average adult man can finish it in around thirty minutes.

I can walk for quite a long time, but running is another matter entirely. If everyone else takes thirty minutes, I suspect I could turn it into a ninety-minute cultural event.

So I asked whether people would still be waiting at the finish line for me.

They said that in a small town like this, yes.

In a major-city marathon, however, absolutely not. At some point they have to reopen the roads, and if you arrive spectacularly late, you may simply be removed from the course.

Useful information.

I could very easily have entered a marathon with no knowledge of this and been professionally escorted away.

Lately I’ve also started playing Pokémon GO again.

Holland has excellent Pokémon.

Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, Ditto—the classics actually appear.

Back when I played in Binghamton, I felt like every second Pokémon was Eevee. I became tired of looking at its face.

Here I have two PokéStops near home, and when I wake up there are Pokémon everywhere.

I have even fought Team Rocket.

A productive March.

March is usually a romantic month for me. I don’t remember having many truly bad Marches. This year, though, it seemed to pass without making much of an impression.

Oddly, I’m not devastated by that.

Life has been comfortable enough.

Still, I want tulip season to hurry up.

Moving into the new place—and replacing the TV—also improved my quality of life considerably, because now I can properly watch documentaries.

I had been waiting for the new dinosaur series on Netflix with the enthusiasm of a six-year-old.

And frankly that is historically accurate.

At six, I was basically Dr. Lee, Professor of Dinosaurs.

WAIT FOR ME, DINOSAURS.

By the end of March, the puffer jacket finally went into the back of the closet.

Holland’s best season is approaching.

To be fair, all four seasons here are lovely. It is only the part of winter where the air actively tries to injure you that I object to.

I also missed a screening in Grand Rapids of The King and the Clown—or rather, a film I wanted to see because Park Ji-hoon was in it.

I like Park Ji-hoon.

During Produce 101, I voted for him, not Kang Daniel.

I still think he may be the most handsome man alive.

Possibly more handsome than Cha Eun-woo.

People around me have rejected this conclusion.

They are entitled to be wrong.

Eventually I did go to Grand Rapids after work and watched the film. Yoo Hae-jin was excellent, and I understood why people praised the intensity in Danjong’s eyes, although seeing my beloved Park Ji-hoon looking that hollow and miserable was personally upsetting.

The film itself felt a little melodramatic to me in the way it unfolded its emotions.

That is entirely personal. Lee Dong-jin, my favourite critic, had plenty of praise for it, so perhaps I am simply difficult.

There has also been too much to watch lately.

I’ve always liked the Avatar films and made sure to see the latest one in theatres. Years ago, when I worked at Pantos, I actually took a day off and went all the way to Jersey City just to see Avatar.

Last weekend I watched Whiplash and finally watched the dinosaur documentary.

The dinosaurs were REALLY good.

I’m still thinking about them.

I plan to watch it again this weekend, then go through the other documentaries associated with Spielberg’s team. There is something satisfying about watching people who know exactly what they are doing: the directing, the pacing, the dramatic construction, the confidence to make an extinct animal feel briefly present.

Experts are cool.

Because extinct animals have to be reconstructed, the series naturally leaned more heavily on storytelling than a conventional wildlife documentary. Now I want something based on animals we can actually observe.

Preferably crocodiles.

I am very interested in crocodiles.

My only serious dinosaur complaint is that there was not enough Triceratops.

I LOVE Triceratops.

T. rex also appeared more as a dramatic punctuation mark than as the centre of the story, which made me think the series was deliberately more interested in the overall process of survival than in celebrity dinosaurs.

Maybe I’ll notice something different on the second viewing.

Or third.

I intend to conduct proper research.

Outside, the lawns are turning that very pale spring green I love, and the tulips have started quietly pushing up.

Recently, while walking between buildings at the factory, I thought I saw a familiar face near PRI.

So naturally I went back later to inspect the same suspected face again.

From another angle, I became less convinced it was the same person.

Further investigation is required.

I may simply start eating lunch in Building 2.

Then, on the final day of March, I developed a terrible migraine.

I wanted to scribble down the week, sleep for a bit, and finish the rest of the day later. Meetings were unusually full of issues, and at some point the words on the screen seemed to detach themselves and begin floating somewhere above my head.

Not easy.

I like saying, “Who said it had to be easy?” but I am also extremely confident in my ability to complain at great length while doing the difficult thing.

Both can be true.

I had already started planning another Chicago trip for April. With the weather getting better, the thought of Chicago feels much nicer than it did in winter. The city is clean enough that I like it more each time I go.

Once every month or two seems ideal.

This time I want small shops, good weather, the river, and generally cute things.

I do not particularly need to see the St. Patrick’s Day green river.

I know it is green.

That information is sufficient.

More than anything, though, the previous week had made me miss people.

Not in the vague sense of being lonely. I wasn’t particularly lonely.

Specific faces kept coming back to me—people who had been kind to me, people I loved being around, people whose presence alone used to make an ordinary day feel ridiculous and fun.

It occurred to me how lucky I had been to have people in my life who made me that happy simply by being nearby.

Several of them kept appearing in my dreams.

A few times I genuinely didn’t want to wake up.

I would like to freeze-dry everyone I like and keep them with me.

Very reasonable attachment style.

Last week I missed them terribly.

This week I’m fine lol.

Meanwhile, I apparently continue to pass as socially normal at work.

A coworker recently more or less confessed that she wanted to be friends.

Very sweet.

She clearly has no idea that at my desk I routinely say things I learned from corporate life that sound like dialogue from a low-budget crime film.

What a pure soul.

I will be an excellently image-managed friend.

Small talk remains another matter.

One of the managers tried chatting with me recently, and apparently whatever I said either bored him or killed the atmosphere so efficiently that he responded, “Goooood job~~~~,” then immediately escaped outside for a cigarette.

A flawless social performance.

And with that, March is over.

I want this spring, summer, and autumn to be completely covered in the things I like—grass, flowers, water, sunlight, all of it.

I also want to take my outdoor sketching more seriously this year, although “seriously” in this case still means remaining permanently at hobby level while owning suspicious amounts of equipment.

That is fine.

The grass is coming back.

The tulips are not here yet, but they’re on their way.

For now, that feels like enough.