A life changing year

Offline Recess is a newsletter that invites you to pause from digital distractions and rediscover the joy of finding inspiration on your own terms, away from the algorithm.

A quick summary: It’s Sunday and today we’re exploring:

• Why Wicked made me cry

• Ways to disconnect this week

• Recs and seeking

I did not have anyone edit this so if you see a typo, be relieved that I’m a human and not a robot.

Intersections

things that are connecting during my recess

I first saw Wicked in December 2005 with one of my best friends (to celebrate our upcoming 19th birthdays). It was the first musical that I had ever seen on Broadway and I was enthralled. I remember playing the soundtrack in my CD player and in my car constantly. It was one of the only ways to re-live it. I didn’t have a smartphone and I don’t even think I was a huge YouTube user (had to look it up - YouTube was created earlier that year).

I was so excited to see it again while studying abroad in London. It had just started playing in the West End a few months before I saw it in January 2007. I also got to see Les Mis that week for the first time. I would say it was a life changing year. Not in a way that led me to pursue musical theater or start singing lessons. But I sang along with those soundtracks at the top of my lungs — the best way to remember how moved I was by the story and the visuals and the talent. Musical theater let me, as a fan, tap into activating my voice as a very young adult. And I think that activation was really important for me.

Just the other day, I watched an interview with Angelina Jolie. She talked about how taking opera lessons felt like a form of therapy. She commented that her teacher told her that her voice is actually higher than how she speaks. And that her true, lower voice was a form of self-protection. She said, “I think it was my softness that, somehow along my life, felt that I either wasn’t safe or wasn’t heard in my softer self.”

So, of course, when I sat in the movie theater last week to watch Wicked the movie, I felt the hot tears in my eyes. I’ve never forgotten the lyrics (even if I was a little muddy on the plot details) despite the fact that it had been 18 years since I last saw the production. And as the music swelled, I remembered how powerful art really is.

Offline Ideas

some ideas to disconnect this week

• Bake a bunch of cookies and share them with people! I made 6 kinds this weekend and am trying to share them with as many people as I can. These ricotta cookies and earl grey cookies were tied as my favorite.

• Go to a movie at the movie theater!

• Have a Lindsay Lohan movie marathon.

• Listen through some of these top rated albums.

Recommendations

things I’d recommend, and things I’m looking for

• Seeking: Boots that are dressier but very comfortable (where I could wear them with socks and walk 10 blocks and not hate my life)

• Recommending: I can’t believe it took me this long to buy this bra. It was recommended to me by so many of you! And I finally got it and it’s so comfortable!

• Seeking: Food-themed ornaments that aren’t from Food52 or World Market. I have a food-themed Christmas tree and have decided to buy one ornament every month so that I don’t spend so much money the first week of next December.

• Recommending: I like to do quick workouts at home if I’m not lifting weights and I’ve enjoyed this YouTube channel’s no equipment workouts.