write me well

Author: Kathy King

  • News!

    Well world, this is probably one of the biggest things Iā€™ll find myself sharing here:

    Iā€™m pregnant! Five months from now, on February 23, 2027, a little gal is due to join this family of ours.

    I know usually this announcement is accompanied by either an Instagram post of a sonogram or a teeny set of baby clothes, but as someone who seriously considered titling this post ā€œPregante!ā€, I knew that wasnā€™t the way for me.  

    Aaron and I are both incredibly excited for this amazing new phase of life, but I’ve held off on sharing because I’ve been thinking about sharing via the internet a whole lot.

    My tendency towards memes over cliches notwithstanding, since finding out Iā€™m pregnant, Iā€™ve found myself unintentionally withdrawing from posting on Instagram. We found out at the end of June, and somewhere around the end of July I realized that not only was I less present online, but that I didnā€™t mind so much.

    A few years back, between the pervasive ads and sponsored posts and general slog that is modern screen time, I really contemplated stepping away from Instagram and even waxed poetic about it here. Unsurprisingly, I ended up back online with my usual goober posts and vintage shopping carousels within a few months. So why is this happening now all on its own? Among the very many emotions Iā€™ve experienced in the last several months, Iā€™ve distilled it down to this: Iā€™m truly considering what I want to share online these days. Private profile or public, privacy settings or no, what do I really want to put out there, into the vast dear void that Kathleen Kelly expounded on in 1998?

    Clearly, I want to share this! It is huge, wonderful news, and I want the many people far and wide that I know and love to hear it. And Instagram has long been that place for me ā€“ itā€™s been whatā€™s brought me back to it time and time again. Yet while Instagram allows for a version of staying in touch that is so valuable, it is also reductive, and lacking intentionality. Instead of sitting down to either call or email an individual friend, or even writing an annual newsletter and mailing it out to a Christmas card list, I can just be myself online and anyone who cares to follow gets to keep knowing me, because my life is mine to share however I want and it all never really was that deep.

    When life started to include Aaron, I knew he was not a social media person, but he has never minded and always consented to the moments when I include him in a photo or a post online. But everything that comes after sharing this news sits somewhere else. This is bringing a whole new party to the table ā€“ a tiny, totally human party that is years away from making their own decisions. You take that and add in two other elephants in the room ā€“ bone-deep exhaustion with all things digital and virtual and a longing for analog that far surpasses millennial nostalgia for the past ā€“ and I just wonder if Iā€™m done with the way I share with Instagram.

    Is that patronizing? Am I suddenly being the worst? I once wrote that one of the most off-putting aspects of having children was my fear of becoming one of those parents: the ones whose opinions, as parents, immediately appear to supersede those of anyone without children. If I am becoming one of those people already, seventeen weeks in, please tell me. But I think this is coming from a combination of places: of being tired of communal online spaces being commodified, of being tired of everything being digital, of nothing online striking the feeling of that black-and-grey Tupperware box my family kept all of our photos and Polaroids in.

    There is part of me that feels like I could (and probably will) end up just lurking on Instagram, or maybe just leaning into aesthetic posting. My profile would suddenly slow down and Iā€™d just be sharing memes to my stories and following the happenings of others. But I donā€™t really want to do that, because that means still getting tied up in all of the really shitty parts of social media: the ads and the sponsored posts and the inadvertent supporting and participating in anything relating to some of the worldā€™s worst humans, all bizarrely intermixed and peppered with the good bits from my friends. My life is about to get a lot busier, and this might just be a good time to step back and return to my 2003 self. Fourteen-year-old me was convinced that when it came to being online, blogging was the best the internet got. She may have had a point.

    Itā€™s entirely possible that this will be a temporary feeling, and that even if I end up keeping this little gal to myself, Iā€™ll still return to Instagram to share and celebrate me. After all, one of the other deep fears I had about parenthood was losing that ability.

    But for now, whatever this all means, I am genuinely excited to share the news that ya girl is pregante! She just might not be talking about it a whole lot. ā¤ļø

  • Oh, spring!

    Much in the same way that you cannot beat London in the summer, you cannot beat the PNW once spring has finally sprung. The sun wins a five-month-long battle with ceaseless cloud cover, the temperature creeps a degree or two above fifty, the sun stops setting at 4pm, and I genuinely think you can feel your soul leave your body (in a good way!) when you step out onto your front porch in the early afternoon to a blue sky filled with warm sunlight. I am a true believer in the seasons and I love them each deeply ā€“ but the first time every year that I feel sun-warmed skin might just be the best seasonal emotion.

    We went down to San Diego in March for a long overdue visit to friends and Americaā€™s finest city and it was a flashforward of the sunshine to come, and I appreciated it in my bones. (For the record, I think when it comes to city monikers, the tourism gods have chosen well when bestowing the title ā€œFinest Cityā€: the English city that boasts that distinction is none other than Norwich.) But after four beautiful days, we left San Diego in March and returned to Auburn in March, where it proceeded to snow. SNOW.

    It took about a month, but now, in the mixed bag of forecasts that is the month of April, spring is doing its damnedest to stay sprung, and I am revelling in it and all of the joy therein.

    Whatā€™s been bringing the joy besides the sunshine? So many things! Letā€™s make a list!

    One: Trips & trips & trips

      There was San Diego last month, then next month I will be going on a cruise to Alaska (a first for me and a very generous gift from a very generous friend), and in August Aaron and I are GOING TO ENGLAND & SPAIN!!!! I am SO VERY THRILLED! We will be there for 12 days, flying in and out of London, where Aaron will get his first United Kingdom experience and see all of the things and people and places I have fallen in love with over and over again. Is there something better than sharing what you love with someone you love? It is one of my most favorite things. Then we will set off for Spain, where we will see one  of my best friends and her amazing family, which will be so very wonderful. And then we will catch the total solar eclipse on the 12th. Jetlag and August heat be damned ā€“ it will be SUCH an adventure, I cannot WAIT.

      Two: Progress of many kinds!

      When we bought our house, it was almost entirely because of the potential on the property to host a shop for Aaron. We have just under half an acre, and on it sits a 24ā€™ x 30ā€™ reinforced cement foundation three-walled RV carport, making us one wall and an electrical plan away from a perfect shop. In the past five months, while the sun battled the ceaseless clouds, Aaron and I have battled the equally ceaseless King County permit department, and we are finally gaining ground, culminating in very exciting coming changes and, eventually, a full-permitted working shop for Aaron! This feels like some of the biggest progress weā€™ve made on the property since moving here, and I am very here for it.

      Then, there is health progress. I donā€™t think I have ever been a particularly unhealthy person, but the past year has seen the most consistent and least dramatic (which I think is fully the only reason this has been consistent) progress in the department that is Being Healthy. I slowed things down in the winter months, because goddamn the winter is long and dark and cold and hard, but now that we are springing, I can mark nearly a full year of running. I checked my old C25K app a few days ago to see when I first picked it up last year: on April 22, 2025, I did my first thirty minute workout of alternating 90 seconds of walking with 30 seconds of jogging. Last Friday I did a casual 4 mile run after work. I just love it and am excited to see if this next year brings any other fun ways to stay on the move. (And if it doesnā€™t? That is A-Okay! Running can absolutely be my personality if needs must.) (Jokes.)

      And then, there is driving progress! This will sound like a weird one because I didnā€™t really plan it and it’s not exactly on everyoneā€™s list of things to learn/know how to do. But last fall, Aaron started teaching me how to drive a manual transmission car. There were many reasons for this: getting extra cache at work, because, well, car museum; feeling cool, because, well, feeling cool; and most practically, being able to jettison Rhonda the Honda, who has been my boon companion since I got back from London in 2021, but why have a car payment when you canā€¦not have a car payment! It wasnā€™t until late January that I really decided to make the jump, after some months of casual weekend lessons and feeling like a small stretch of Military Road just outside of our neighborhood where I could hit fourth gear for all of two-hundred yards was the most I could handle without having a panic attack. But since about the second week of February, this gal has been daily driving a lovely little manual transmission 1998 Ford Ranger, and Rhonda has gone on to greener pastures (i.e. Carmax). Maybe Iā€™ve just been spending too much time around car people, but I really do think there is something to driving a stick shift. I have been converted and absolutely love it and despite it being completely unplanned, this too feels like progress.

      Three: The Little, Beautiful Things

      Iā€™m not going to go fact-check this statement, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that tucked into the first or last paragraph of every post Iā€™ve written since November 2024 there is something along the lines of ā€œignoring the fact that the world is on fireā€. Thatā€™s because it feels inherently bad to write a whole lot about what is going well when everything on a macro level is, legitimately, the worst ā€“ even by millennial, unprecedented times terms. But the truth is I donā€™t think that you can really keep on keeping on if you donā€™t have some good to focus on, and I feel that no less now than I did in November 2024. And so much of that good is the little, beautiful things. (Baseball caps & also, kindness. That sort of thing.)

      Back in my Tumblr era, there was a trend of listing Very Good Things. It might just be because Iā€™m listening to the They Were All Making BANGERS playlist that captures the moustache-laden hipster whimsy optimism of the early 2010ā€™s, but I think we could all benefit from bringing Very Good Things back. We all desperately need Very Good Things, and the most wonderful part of Very Good Things was that sometimes, it was something as simple as really good plate of spaghetti. Or a fan-fucking-tastic playlist. The stakes were low: if it brought you joy, even in the tiniest amount, it was a Very Good Thing.

      Whether it’s in the form of a pair of yellow speckled plates, of laughing at something incredibly stupid, or of realizing people are capable of changing feelings at any giving moment, this sentiment seems to be all around my life right now. And like the sunshine on my front porch, I am revelling in it. May everyone, world on fire or no, have more Very Good Things meet them left, right, and center, wherever they are.

    1. Routes (66)

      Kicking off 2026 with a Goliath Post in tribute to how I spent the first two weeks of the year. Buckle up, my dudes!

      Three months ago, the CEO of the non-profit I work for called me into his office and asked me what I was doing for the first two weeks of January. We werenā€™t even seated for the question, so it seemed inherently casual. He wanted to know – if I didnā€™t have any plans, that is ā€“ would I  be interested in driving from Santa Monica to Chicago, then on to Detroit, following along historic Route 66 as part of a vintage nine-car caravan?

      Full disclosure: sure, I work for an organization wholly inspired by the automobile, but my appreciation for vehicles of any kind is not natural and was borne entirely of seeing Aaronā€™s interest in these things firsthand. Truthfully, I would likely never have gone for this job if not for Aaron. So while I am always keen for an adventure, when presented with the option to go on this road trip, I was apprehensive. Twelve days is a long time to spend on the road with people that are not friends or family. Itā€™s a long time to drive a car thatā€™s twice as old as I am, to be ā€œon the jobā€. An adventure, sure. But whoof, a lot of me wondered, at what cost? Am I really enough of a car person to do this?

      I didnā€™t know the real answer to that question, and in the end it was not my sense of adventure or faith in my ability to fake my car-ness for nearly two weeks straight that made me say yes. It was, I am afraid to say, simply my natural response, ingrained in my emotional muscles from years of being a yes-person. (Iā€™m not proud of it and Iā€™m still working on it! These things take time.) After a week or so of talking to Aaron about it and considering my options, I said yes, and signed up.  

      The Drive Home, the name of this little annual adventure, is a seven-year old partnership between our organization, Americaā€™s Automotive Trust, and the Detroit Auto Show. Each year a new drive is planned, always in vintage cars, and always ending at the first day of the show in Detroit. The Drive celebrates the significance of cars in American culture, the importance of not just vintage cars, but maintaining them and keeping them on the road when you can, and really, just the sense of adventure that comes hand-in-hand (or hand-on-wheel) as part of a road trip. In an irresistible turn of timing, 2026 marks the centennial one of Americaā€™s most iconic roads: Route 66. There was no question what route this yearā€™s Drive would take ā€“ we would be on the Mother Road. 

      On the overcast morning of January 3rd, when we took off from the iconic Santa Monica Pier and headed towards our first stop at the Historic Rancho Cucamonga Fueling Station, I realized I knew nothing about Route 66. I had seen Cars. Thatā€™s about it. To fill in the gaps in my knowledge, I imagined that the route was abandoned because it was less efficient and lacked the lanes of the new interstate system, but I still pictured it as a fairly direct highway, kicking off in Santa Monica before following a relatively straight line all the way to Chicago.

      Friends, I was so wrong.

      For those as unknowing as me circa three weeks ago: all Route 66 did was connect a bunch of preexisting town-to-town roads. Itā€™s called the Main Street of America because it IS Main Street for many of its long miles. If you drive any significant stretch of Route 66, you will at many points find yourself on beautiful, historic, sometimes abandoned, sometimes restored and thriving, actual Main Streets of towns in countryside youā€™d never be able to point out on a map. So many of these towns are still filled with people passionate for the route, passionate for what it meant for Americans when it was first opened. Some of them were born and raised in these places; even more fell in love with the route on their own road trip, picked up their lives, and relocated to Tucumcari, New Mexico; to Ā Adrian, Texas; to Miami, Oklahoma. You can tell the moment you meet these people that nothing sparks their joy like being a part of Route 66, of preserving it for future generations. There was not a single town we stopped in where this was not my experience.

      It was, in the end, an eleven day road trip, inherently impossible to catalogue effectively in a single post. So, obviously, I did it across eleven different posts on Instagram.

      I continue to hope I will ween myself off of Instagram entirely one day, so in that vein, Iā€™m going to pop everything I put there up on here to make sure my memories donā€™t disappear suddenly because Instagram unexpectedly dies a death.

      Day 1: Santa Monica to Barstow šŸŒ“>šŸœļø

      Highlights: Getting to park on Santa Monica pier, the most delicious breakfast & cutest hat from the Melā€™s Diner at the endpoint of Route 66, visiting Rancho Cucamonga historic service station and getting an even CUTER hat from said service station, first time wigwam motel experience (just driving through), and finishing off with an A+ dinner at Royā€™s Cafe in Barstow.

      Day 2: Barstow, CA to Kingman, AZ šŸœļø>šŸ‘‘

      Highlights: First big stretch of Route 66, seeing bush planes taxi at Royā€™s Cafe in Amboy, feeding a delightful burro in Oatman, seeing the sun break through the clouds on the Sitgreaves Pass, taking Woody (the ā€˜65 Country Squire Iā€™m driving) on many twists & turns, a photo op in Cool Springs, and a five-star desert sunset in Kingman.

      Day 3: Kingman, AZ to Winslow, AZ šŸ‘‘ > šŸŽ¶

      Highlights: Everything about the Kingman Visitorā€™s Center, blue blue skies and all the floofy desert clouds, ghost gas stations galore, the recently restored Osterman Gas Station & the warm welcome we received, not almost running out of gas, remembering to not call Winslow Arizona Winston Arizona, Flagstaff!!, lots of laughing, and being a lot less exhausted than I was this time yesterday.

      Day 4: Winslow, AZ to Albuquerque, NM šŸŽ¶ > šŸŒµ

      Highlights: Red Rock Park, the amazing people in Gallup, NM that welcomed us at the El Rancho Hotel, lots of high desert driving, and rolling up to Albuquerque where we got a private tour of the most amazing neon sign collection Iā€™ve ever seen in person.

      Tomorrow marks the halfway point! Maybe I will find a new pose? But probably not šŸ¤£

      Day 5: Albuquerque, NM to Amarillo, TX šŸŒµ > šŸ‘¢

      Highlights: Turning a loss (major toe stub first thing in the morning) into a win (spontaneous cozy moccasin purchase at Clineā€™s Corner), falling in love with the flag of New Mexico and also the gem that is The Blue Swallow Motel, meeting more excellent humans, meeting Izzy the Cat at the Route 66 Midway Point, more neon, and experiencing the beautifully cornball roadside attraction that is The Big Texan Steak Ranch. They do NOT brag enough about their lemon cake.

      Day 6: Amarillo, TX to Weatherford, OK šŸ‘¢ > šŸ› ļø

      Highlights: The best swag bag from Visit Amarillo, a lovely hotel stay, breakfast tacos, getting to answer emails during daylight hours for the first time since last Wednesday because we got stuck while the 1965 Ford Country Squire got fixed, and finally making it to Weatherford sans any planned stops to catch up with the rest of the crew at 7pm.

      Day 7: Weatherford, OK to Tulsa, OK šŸ› ļø > šŸ›¤ļø

      Highlights: Driving the biggest uninterrupted stretch of Route 66 so far (a truly wonderful experience with blue winter skies), Pops on 66 and their A+ modern building and swag, meeting Ed Threatt Sr. at Threatt Filling Station, getting to see the cutest shop in Tulsa that generously worked on several of our caravan cars (@atlasautomotive_route66), & being back in the Squire. One of my favorite days of the trip!

      Day 8: Tulsa, OK to Lebanon, MO šŸ›¤ļø > šŸŒ¾

      Highlights: Our brief stop at the gem that is the Coleman Theater of Miami (Mia-muh), OK, meeting the locals at Main Street Cafe, seeing the original inspo for Mater in Galena, KS, driving into Lebanon (Lebā€™nun), MO at sunset, being greeted by a huge crowd that joined us for a Route 66 Museum tour, and eating the best mustard BBQ sauce I have ever had at Smokinā€™ Joeā€™s of Wrinks Market, in the company of excellent car and motorcycle people, where I learned the term ā€œcycle [sickle] bumā€. Would 100% Lebā€™nun again.

      Day 9: Lebanon, MO to Springfield, IL šŸŒ¾ > šŸŽ©

      Highlights: Yet another blue skied winter day spent driving old stretches of Route 66, the warm welcome from the team in Rolla, MO (including a cat!!), seeing the Gateway Arch for the first time, driving across Bridge of Rocks in the Squire, lunching (fried cheese curds!!) at Weezyā€™s on 66 (complete with some of the shortest bathroom stalls Iā€™ve seen), a wheat field sunset for the ages, and excellent company in the coolest repurposed building in Springfield, IL at Motorheads Bar & Grill.

      Seeing firsthand why Route 66 is called Americaā€™s Main Street continues to be one of the best parts of this trip. Today we finish in Chicago, and tomorrow we cannonball to Detroit to help open the Detroit Auto Show. Itā€™s been a helluva ten days!

      Day 10: Springfield, IL to Chicago, IL šŸŽ© > šŸ™ļø

      Highlights: Seeing Mama Burger at the Museum of Giants in Atlanta, IL, the first snow !! (just a smidge of it and already on the ground), checking out the Pontiac Museum, and hitting the final stretch of 66 – which was not pretty šŸ¤£ but still an achievement – and getting a photo at the official sign.

      Big Bertha tribute post: (written from the cozy comfort of a 2026 Expedition, because the Squire is now in the trailer for the rest of this journey šŸ¤£)

      I logged just over 2,000 miles in this car in the past ten days, and it was SUCH a trip. Sure, it wouldā€™ve been nice to have had a car whose transmission didnā€™t quit 35 miles outside of Chicago, but she gave all she had to give and we had SO many laughs across 9 states. Born in 1965 and still going (ish), thanks for the journey big girl!

      Day 11: Chicago, IL to Detroit, MI šŸ™ļø > šŸš˜

      (For the record, I write this from the comfort of my own bed, having slept for 17 of the last 24 hours.)

      Highlights: THE most beautiful sunrise, only having a minor menty B at a Starbucks in Michigan City, and finally, after 2,300+ miles, making it to Detroit.

      BB, this beautiful 1965 Ford Country Squire, kicked the can due to a slipping transmission 35 miles outside of Chicago. With the help of a trailer, we were able to at least get her dropped off at the Detroit Auto Show. And as she sat there outside the building, with no one in particular super eager to drive her in her slippery state, it became clear that there was only one person that should take her through the convention center doors in the relative safety of her low gear. (It was me.)

      Thanks to everyone who followed along on this very long but also incredibly fast adventure. I know that some genuinely terrible shit has been happening in this country and in the world while Iā€™ve been on this road trip, and at times I almost held off posting because it felt comparatively vacuous and silly to share a giant soda bottle in Arcadia, OK or another picture of the sky. But I will tell you – whether it was the kindness of total strangers, the truly vast and varied landscapes, or moments like catching an anti-facist protest in towns where you least expected it – this was a reminder that there are good people and beautiful things here. And itā€™s not that I didnā€™t know that, or that it means you donā€™t have to do anything to try and fight against whatā€™s happening. Nothing gets done in something a simple as an Instagram caption. But that was my main takeaway from this (albeit exhausting) escape from my regular life. America may be a dumpster fire, but it is so worth trying to save – and more people than you think in places you would not guess feel that way too.

    2. Baseball caps but also, kindness

      Half a post a month is not my finest average. Donā€™t take it personally, 2025. I’ve had worse statistics, and this is most certainly a case of itā€™s not you, itā€™s me. In fact, if it makes you feel any better, thereā€™s a notebook sitting somewhere in my house that has, at most, been visited three times this year. (Future Kathy: stop trying to make stone paper notebooks happen. The advertisements are slick but the paper is not. You will always hate writing in them.) 

      Even though it is impossible from a mathematical perspective for there to be fewer days of December before Christmas from one year to the next, this year the impossible feels possible. Weā€™re as many days into the month as we are away from Christmas, and most of me feels like itā€™s still September.  

      This is for several reasons: aside from the atmospheric river we had this week, it has been a very mild fall/winter, so more than a few of our neighborhood trees still boast a thick mix of orange and red leaves. Iā€™m also spending more time outside in our neighborhood, so it feels like a bigger deal than it probably is. Then we got our Christmas tree pretty early (in November!), but itā€™s a potted tree that we belatedly realized was dead dry, and we ended up needing to undecorate it and leave it outside in the rain for a few days. Itā€™s been back inside since Tuesday, I think? But I havenā€™t really felt the Christmas spirit inspire me to redress it, so it is still naked, just two feet of very off-putting pokey needles, sitting by its lonesome in the window.  

      I guess thatā€™s not exactly several things, but itā€™s enough. That and the universe being all universe-y have conspired to make it feel like Christmas is anything but a week from this Thursday.  

      Ignoring the fact that technically, it is not the season of winter, I have to say that winter as it feels right now is the most ridiculous thing. This is my third winter in the PNW, and my (pauses to count) ninth (NINTH!) one on this latitude, if you count all of the time I spent in the UK. When we moved here, I didnā€™t think that the short days would be all that much of an issue because Iā€™d done it before, for years at a time, and been just fine. 

      What I did not reckon with was the longitude. In this particular part of the world: 1. The sun is not a Ā£50 flight away. 2. Even if it was, you donā€™t get enough paid time off to buy the flight, take the flight, and go enjoy it. In short, it makes handling the dark days and the lack of sun a helluva lot more challenging.  

      The goal this winter is to be nicer to myself about being annoyed by that. Itā€™s okay to do less and achieve less when all your body wants to do is…nothing. The progress gained over the past eight months of running is not undone by the fact that Iā€™m only squeezing in two-ish runs a week right now. Because really: two-ish runs? In this lighting?? That is something to be celebrated! (Plus, brief flex, those runs are now up to a cool four miles each. Still feeling very Who Is She but I love it.)  

      In other silly andĀ shouldnā€™tĀ matterĀ news but feels, well,Ā very big? Is that for the first time in almost twenty years, I amĀ growing outĀ my hair. This is primarily an exercise to see just how white my gray hair will get, and it is going the best it has ever gone. I have made it through the most painful phases,Ā the ones that do not bear describing, but Iā€™m now stuck in the endlessĀ un-pony-tail-able bob phase that requires no fewer than eight bobby pins to be on hand at any given time (unless a hat is present).Ā Because my hair is curly, it feels like all it has done for the past two months is grow outward and upward ā€“ every direction but the one desired.Ā I have discovered in myself a love of baseball caps that I never thought possibleĀ (weā€™reĀ all about the impossible in this post, I guess) and it makes me feel absurdly glam, the source ofĀ whichĀ Iā€™mĀ choosing toĀ trace back to Princess Diana.Ā Ā 

      So really, I have achieved lots of things this year. Two very specific things that have plagued me as impossible for many years, and a handful of other things. What Iā€™m trying to tell myself in this glummy winter vibe is that resolutions in the plural are rather insane things. It is absolutely okay, and to be expected, to really only achieve a thing or two. I have many years ahead of me in which to achieve more things. Whoā€™s to say I donā€™t continue this habit, and each year tackle 1-2 new resolutions? Multiply that out across a lifetime and that is SO MANY THINGS! We should all be nicer to ourselves. We should not take it personally when we donā€™t make everything happen on the timeline we envisioned, en masse and concurrently and as if just getting through to Friday is not, some weeks, a big-ass achievement. 

      Bringing this full circle, much of this is coming from my sensitivity to the fact that I have not, indeed, written very much at all this year. I truly thought Iā€™d found a project earlier in the spring but it has since died a death, and no other writing projects have come to take its place. And if I am being honest, I really wanted that to be one of my Achievements this year. Whereas growing out my hair or starting to run are exciting new things that I can add to my identity roster, writing has been so long a front-row feature of that list that itā€™s becoming really hard to not take my lack of writing personally.  

      But there is so much time to fix that.Ā Itā€™llĀ come back around.Ā Itā€™sĀ not you, writing,Ā itā€™sĀ me.Ā Iā€™llĀ figure it out. Iā€™m being kinder to myself and celebrating the small wins, like right now: when I droppedĀ by the library to return a few books, and instead of walking right back out, I sat down at a computer, tabled my purseĀ and my plans to grocery shop,Ā and for the first time since university spent time writing at a library, writing this post.Ā Ā 

    3. Moody Moods

      Almost exactly a year ago, I rediscovered The Moody Blues. I randomly remembered their rather delightful song Lovely To See You, decided to use it for a tiny reel I made for the journey downtown to get my last tattoo, then promptly forgot about them again.

      Something in the late summer of this year brought them back from my periphery, and unsatisfied with the various Best of The Moody Blues collections I could find online, I created a nearly two-hour-long playlist titled The Moody Blues Per My Childhood. It has been my constant soundtrack these past several months and, the way often only music (and particularly, music with uniquely nostalgic ties) can, it has brought me a disproportionate amount of joy.

      As with many things in my life, this stems from an obsession of my momā€™s (shout out to Karen King). The Moody Blues were a deeply seeded staple of my early childhood, linked inexorably with memories of the condo featured in our home movies and my momā€™s Laura Ashley dresses and Princess Diana haircut. When I asked her how she got into the band in the early 90ā€™s, which was hardly their heyday, she said it was through my Aunt Joan (shout out to Aunt Joan).

      So on my next call to my aunt, I asked her what caused the sudden love for Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Graeme Edge, and Ray Thomas. She shared that at the time of the onset, she was living in Vancouver and studying for a masters. She was also, as it happens, incurably homesick. Home for my aunt wasnā€™t California ā€“ having left for Denver before I was born, she was missing the Rocky Mountain State. So when, in 1992, The Moody Blues issued a recording of their live performance at Red Rocks, it was for her like a postcard from home. A fantastic live album in its own right, it cemented The Moody Blues as one of her, and eventually my momā€™s, favorites.

      (Prior to this, she hilariously shared with me, her only knowledge of them had been Nights in White Satin, which she hated, because for a group of friends she spent time with in her early 20ā€™s, it was the song the boys in the group would play on repeat whenever they had a girl in their room. A musical sock on the door, if you will, played ad nauseum. I die.)

      If nothing else, I am a total sucker for nostalgia, the weepy whims of missing something, the feeling of needing a person or, better yet, a place or a time. Finding out that my own familyā€™s ties to this underrated progressive rock band were rooted in exactly that ā€“ UGH, the full circle swell of joy it brought me! They are my favorite brand of feelings: the emotional equivalent of the French word souvenir ā€“ meaning memory ā€“ being adopted into the English language. Give it to me ALL. DAY.

      This all felt very appropriate for September, which was a month of family things. After an unintentional two-year hiatus from Sacramento, I spent the last week of September staying with my family and having the best time. Sushi, vintage shopping, and laughter with my sister and her girlfriend, ice cream sundaes with one niece, an afternoon of coloring and make-believe with the other, visiting the renaissance faire for the first time in a decade with my other sister, and many mornings of tea and chats with my mom. A perfect moment for The Moody Blues Per My Childhood, if I do say so myself.

      Prior to September, the entire summer had been spent fully entrenched in car things: Aaron started teaching me how to drive a stick shift, I went to more car shows than I can count, I planned scenic drives for my work. Cars on cars on cars. Then there was my trip home, and now, itā€™s fall! Lovely, leafy, tea-filled fall. Yesterday was a crisp autumn day and we had shepherdā€™s pie for dinner. This morning was cozy and spent on the sofa before heading off for coffee and errands. I have every plan to bake homemade ginger nut biscuits this afternoon, and tomorrow ā€“ currently looking to be all blue skies and chilly sunshine ā€“ weā€™re going to head out to Snoqualmie Falls. In a world that is feeling increasingly insane, itā€™s the little things. And sometimes, those things are listening to a silly little playlist while the leaves turn.