It’s been a bit of a rough year so far. If you’ve even glanced at the news headlines this past month, you probably understand why I’ve been feeling a bit cynical lately. To force myself into a better mindset, I decided to pay attention to what made me feel slightly better about the state of the world and write about it. So, without further ado …
Alysa Liu’s Olympic Gold
Figure skating is a notoriously hypercompetitive sport whose athletes are often forced to adhere to punishing dietary and training regimens. My skating experience is limited to a few lessons I took when I was around ten years old, but as a (recovering?) perfectionist myself, I can easily imagine what life is like for elite figure skaters. During the 2026 Winter Olympics, American skater Alysa Liu upended figure skating norms with her shockingly healthy relationship to the sport. She eats what she wants and spends all the time with her friends she wants to, and when she skates, she does so because she loves it and not because she needs to be the best at it.
Alysa Liu became the first American female skater to ever land a quad lutz in competition successfully when she was fourteen years old, yet she chose to stop attempting quads because of the massive toll it took on her young, growing body. Many in the figure skating world thought that without Liu putting her body through misery just to try to land a quad, her career would be over. Six years later, though, she has thoroughly and definitively proved them wrong.
If Liu can be the best in the world at what she does while she has fun doing it—maybe even because she has so much fun doing it—maybe we should all try to enjoy our lives a little more.Crozet’s Heated Rivalry Night
In what I can only describe as a gift from the universe, Crozet Buddhist Biker Bar’s Heated Rivalry-themed event coincided with the night of my twenty-first birthday. Since I watched the first two episodes last November, I’ve lost count of how many people around me I’ve convinced to watch the show. When I arrived at Crozet with my friends five minutes after the event started, there was already a line down Elliewood Avenue. At a time when diverse stories are being censored and banned in schools and colleges around the country, it was wonderful to see so many UVA students willing to celebrate a queer love story. Maybe some of them were just there for the vaguely hockey-themed $3 shots, but I’m choosing to believe the success of the event was mainly attributable to the vast majority of people’s willingness to celebrate love in all of its forms.
The Try Hard Podcast
A few weeks ago, Spotify recommended me a podcast episode about two friends who met in grad school and started an independent publishing company dedicated to repackaging obscure books from the nineteenth century with new covers, introductions, and visual guides to forgotten cultural objects from the time period. The episode was called “You Can Just Publish Books?” and something about the incredulity in that statement, the recognition of how shockingly possible achieving your creative goals can be, drew me to the podcast. This podcast is Try Hard, where the host Alex Sujong Laughlin helps guests identify a goal they want to achieve and work toward it. Guests have done everything from learning to do a cartwheel to hosting a party despite their shyness.
In the first episode of Try Hard, Laughlin explains that her own struggles with anxiety inspired her to start this podcast. She says that while she hasn’t been able to eliminate fear from her life entirely, she has learned to work around it and in spite of it and wants to help others to do the same thing. This podcast has been a wonderful companion as I wander around Grounds and push myself out of my own comfort zone by conquering tasks like learning to read Middle English for a class I’m taking on medieval women’s writings or getting back into running.
Spring
I know spring technically starts in late March and I know that it technically snowed the other day, but I personally have decided that it’s spring. There isn’t any more snow on the ground of my Animal Crossing island, so this naturally means spring has sprung. Maybe it’s just the primordial, warmth-seeking lizard instincts leftover in my brain, but spring brings me so much joy. Spring has been my favorite season since I saw the trees in full bloom at UVA as a first year. This is my third spring at UVA, but I’ll never take for granted how gorgeous it is to see Grounds come back to life every March. The warm weather also means that people are walking their dogs around Grounds again, and I can pet said dogs. My family’s corgi is two and a half hours away at my parents’ house, and I miss him dearly. So far, I’ve seen two corgis on Grounds since the weather has gotten warmer, and I hope to see many more.
While there are so many major causes for despair right now, I want to continue searching for my little pockets of light and hope.
