Long gone are the days I save every file in one place; RIP my 2003 Sony Vaio laptop named Konsuke, which held that distinction for almost a decade. Because of this (actually mostly because of the Cloud), my personal OneDrive has become this bizarre bastion of rando documents saved ignominiously as “Document8” or “Hills” or “Happy Sunday afternoon”. Many are blog posts that made it all the way to my blog. Many are little written blips, a few hundred words that I clearly never felt came full circle enough to post but now serve as very specific snapshots of moments I had since forgotten.
I found three today that I think deserve to be dusted off and shared with the world. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. (The interjections I couldn’t help adding are in italics.)
Titled “2020 / I’m not an adult, YOU ARE”, written on January 2, 2020
Twenty-four hours into 2020 and I’m off to a roaring start. [HA] Yesterday, I watched a season and a half of Nashville and ran the dishwasher. Today, I started my day like a champ – with a cinnamon Danish and white coffee from Pret – and followed it like one too, with a burger for lunch, blistered padrón peppers for an evening snack, and popcorn and Terry’s chocolate orange slices for dinner.
I’ll be thirty-one in a month and if this manages to be the year I start eating like you’re, well, supposed to, I’ll be as shocked as the rest of you. I blame my professional upbringing in retail for these dietary habits, but honestly for the most part I’ve just got a small appetite, boundless energy, and zero patience for cooking. This’ll be me until somebody shows up and makes me do otherwise. We all have our categories: what we care about, what we really care about, and what we aggressively ignore because why prioritize responsible life habits and consistency? That’s some impossible nonsense.
I’ve used retail and its utter lack of consistency as an immaculate crutch, a spotless excuse to never have a routine or habit of any kind. The being at work part of my job is genuinely the only part that feels routine. The when of it varies, constantly. And the way I’ve handled it, from age twenty-two onwards, has done anything but.
Don’t misunderstand me – I do feel like I’ve changed in the past ten years. I have for SURE changed. But mostly at work. At home, outside of work, I’m the same girl that spent her days off at Peet’s, working on a novel, feeling fulfilled by the very act of sipping an iced coffee and typing on my laptop. I’ve spent many a moment being grateful for what I’ve come to realize is the ease of my satisfaction. I am almost always one day off, one stunning playlist, and a blank word document away from a good mood. It’s just something I was born with. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that this ease of happiness has some pretty fatal drawbacks. Well, not fatal. But not thrilling, either. For example, because it’s so easy for me to be happy on my own, when I’m not really accomplishing anything, it staves off any true will power to, y’know, accomplish ANYthing. And this is where the annual hoo-ha around resolutions rears its black and white, bullet-pointed face.
See, I’ve always been more of a May girl when it comes to the winds of change. Spring is my time when I feel the world is fresh and my spirit is lifted by the mere promise of potential…whatevers. It happens to me every May without fail. New Years? Eh. January is the least magical month out there. It’s a grim, Christmas-less winter month, filled with short days and shit weather. It carries its own sense of promise in my realm of retail, where there is genuinely nothing more satisfying than consolidating every remaining speck of holiday product onto three grimy shelves and gutting your gifting displays in favour of spring product. But then even the spring product feels like a lie. Because as clean and fresh and new as it is, you take two steps outside – in Sacramento or London – and you wonder why you’d even bother. Grim is a rather nice word for January.
So I’m envious of people that can engage with the concept of a fresh start this time of year. I’m always biding my time until May, looking down my nose at the stacks of other people’s goals around me, and think ha! What a farce. Because I know that May is when shit gets real. It’s when I decide that anything can happen and I, me, empowered and fiercely independent and badass, am the one that’s going to do it. creative [Not sure why the word creative is here, alone and uncapitalized, attached to no larger thought or sentence. Sounds about right, actually.]
Unsurprisingly, the best part is that every year, when I get there and beautiful May arrives with its fluttery feels, glorious sunshine, and deeply moving vibes, literally nothing will have changed. I’ll get weepy and motivated and “COME AT ME, BRO” about my new fierce goals, when the truth is I’m useless at resolutions no matter how much my spirit thrums in protest, no matter the calendar month. [Still and likely forever a true statement.]
Titled “Happy Sunday afternoon”, written on October 11, 2020
Happy Sunday afternoon, where I, Kathy, go out of my way to plan a beautiful few hours of studying by the Tower of London, only to forget the stylus for my Surface, with which I highlight all the things. [This made me laugh out loud and was what first tempted me to share these posts.]
The year I moved back to California from Norwich was the year I became obsessed with the album Sigh No More. That was nearly ten years ago, but no matter how much time passes, those songs instantly transport me. For me, music has a nostalgic pull to rival scent.
I would put on that album when I started commuting to the World Market in Natomas, and it kept me company every shift until two months later, when on Christmas Eve, the car radio was stolen from my dad’s gold Ford F150, leaving my home-burned copy of Sigh No More stuck in the player for all time. But those two months were enough to sear it delightfully into my memory, triggering visions of the otherwise unremarkable drive down Madison towards 80, when I would wonder how long it would be until I was back in the UK. So when Winter Winds came on shuffle this morning, and its first line carried me through a cider-crisp fall day on my way to the Tower of London for a day of studying, it felt like a nine-year circle coming to a close.
I like to think I excel when it comes to finding the good in a bad situation. My natural rampant enthusiasm has run gleefully unchecked for most of my life. It’s not quite toxic in its positivity, but it does have a rather dangerous [This one fades off, the sentence incomplete, before ending with the following ominous statement three lines later.]
It’s a very strange feeling, when you’ve actively identified as an extrovert your entire life, to realize you deeply enjoy spending time alone.
Titled “28March21”, written (unsurprisingly) on March 28, 2021
For the last week I was in London, I spent my most anxious moments looking forward to one thing: the feeling, fresh from a scalding hot shower, of falling asleep in a hotel bed at the end of my eighteen-hour journey. Normally I’d just go straight to someone’s home upon arrival back in California, with the biggest concern being a potential flight delay or the fifteen-second panic when I put my passport in the wrong pocket of my coat. But this time around, there was far more to be worried about. COVID results. Flight cancellations. Shipping issues. So it was with an immense sense of relief that I went through the very bizarre process that is traveling internationally during a global pandemic with no issues at all, arriving safely in San Francisco to be picked up by my mom and deposited at a local hotel in Sacramento for quarantine. I took my scalding hot shower and slid into the sheets and was out within five minutes, blissfully fighting off jetlag for an impressive eight hours before waking up the next day at seven in the morning. It was a weird experience to herald in a weirdly not-weird period of my life – I doubt I will ever get to be on a London-to-San-Francisco flight with only 36 other passengers on board. I also doubt I’ll have to coordinate a similar large-scale international life move, but if ya girl has learned anything, it’s to never say never. [Facts.]
It feels like the most natural thing in the world to be writing this in Sacramento, from the patio of my best friend of twenty years, despite the fact that as recently as two months ago I was entrenched in a UK-based job hunt. I’m almost a professional when it comes to convincing myself I’m sure of the future, even when it turns out I have no idea what I’m talking about. (Or sometimes I do know, and just don’t know it yet. Like when I write a post called “Roots” detailing all of the reasons I was conflicted and felt like I belonged in California, and then still managed to be shocked when I came to that conclusion out loud less than a month later.) But as difficult as a decision as it was, things continue to happen to validate it. Almost cramping my shoulders from hugging my sisters too hard. My niece telling me I’m annoying because I “keep leaving”, then me explaining that this time I was just going to a different house twenty minutes away. Drinking a bottle of wine and getting to have a conversation in person with my best friend. The taste of an excellent breakfast burrito. And above all, a lack of panic at suddenly up-ending my life for something I never thought I’d particularly envy: good, old-fashioned, stability and support.
So there you have it – a few moments in time, unintentionally bookmarked, now intentionally posted.
In closing, I am very happy to report that I ended up being right all along.
(I’ll let you decide about what.)
write me well 
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