write me well

Tag: goals

  • Baseball caps but also, kindness

    Half a post a month is not my finest average. Don’t take it personally, 2025. I’ve had worse statistics, and this is most certainly a case of it’s not you, it’s me. In fact, if it makes you feel any better, there’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. We’re as many days into the month as we are away from Christmas, and most of me feels like it’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. I’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 it’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. It’s been back inside since Tuesday, I think? But I haven’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 that’s not exactly several things, but it’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 didn’t think that the short days would be all that much of an issue because I’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 £50 flight away. 2. Even if it was, you don’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. It’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 I’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 and shouldn’t matter news but feels, well, very big? Is that for the first time in almost twenty years, I am growing out 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, the ones that do not bear describing, but I’m now stuck in the endless 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). Because my hair is curly, it feels like all it has done for the past two months is grow outward and upward – every direction but the one desired. I have discovered in myself a love of baseball caps that I never thought possible (we’re all about the impossible in this post, I guess) and it makes me feel absurdly glam, the source of which I’m choosing to trace back to Princess Diana.  

    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 I’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. Who’s to say I don’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 don’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 I’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 it’s becoming really hard to not take my lack of writing personally.  

    But there is so much time to fix that. It’ll come back around. It’s not you, writing, it’s me. I’ll figure it out. I’m being kinder to myself and celebrating the small wins, like right now: when I dropped by the library to return a few books, and instead of walking right back out, I sat down at a computer, tabled my purse and my plans to grocery shop, and for the first time since university spent time writing at a library, writing this post.  

  • Gerunds

    Well, if February felt quick, the four months that followed lasted all of five minutes. Which is how you find me, in the near-exact middle of July, deciding it’s time to check back in and think some thoughts online.

    Completely ignoring the raging dumpster fire that is this nation, the first half of 2025 has been rather dreamy – particularly in comparison to the six months that preceded it. Instead of walking through the last however-long sequentially and all of the delightful things that did happen, I’m just going to round-robin my way through some of the sources of joy because this is my slice of the internet and that’s how I want to do it.

    Kevin-ing

    Let’s lead with Kevin.

    Last I wrote, I thought I hadn’t mentioned him here, but turns out I had one time in passing. If you’ve talked to me at any point since August 30, 2024, you know this tabby ball of meows deserves far more than a mention in passing that was so short I didn’t even realize I did it. Here is that more.

    Full disclosure, cat people of the world: it wasn’t until I met Chevy that I really understood why people loved cats. I was born a dog person and knew no other way to exist. What can I say – I like my affection obvious, so visceral that it knocks you over when you come home from work because the affection is a dog that is jumping on you. Chevy changed that. I loved Chevy and Chevy loved me. But Aaron was always her Person, and she loved no one quite as much as she loved her Person.

    Kevin is not perfect. He is needy (we call him special needy) and really doesn’t like it when you play bongos on him. He is a LIAR about having been fed, has a propensity to CONSUME SILICON that had never before been seen by our vet, and for a nearly 15 lb cat he has the meow of a thirteen year old girl from the Valley. But Kevin has decided I am his Person, and dear reader, let me tell you, this is a first time experience for me and I cannot.

    He waits for me to wake up in the morning. He meows at me when I get home. He comes and lays on my chest, getting so close to my face it’s like he’s an infant trying to get that newborn skin-to-skin contact. At night, he sleeps tucked into the crook of my elbow with his chin resting on my forearm. He is The Worst in many ways (usually when he is lying about the fact that he hasn’t been fed), but PAPA I LOVE HIM. He has been no small source of silliness and laughter (and annoyance) and joy since he waltzed, shouting and underfed, into our lives last August. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

    Goal-ing

    Of all of the goals I hoped to achieve when I set up my beloved intentions last January, the one I had the least faith in being able to achieve was, obviously, finding movement.

    PEOPLE, SHE HAS FOUND MOVEMENT.

    For the first time in twenty years, I am enjoying RUNNING. I have been running three times a week for eight weeks and it has been…delightful? I won’t be that person that instantly makes their chosen form of exercise their personality (even though here I am, blogging about it at the first opportunity) but what I will say is this: regularly moving around really is the best way to appreciate my silly little body. You simply cannot go wrong with movement. So, find your movement!!

    And if you think it could be running – or even if you don’t think it could be running – highly recommend investing $5.99 in the Couch to 5k app. Grab a pair of headphones and pretend you’re on The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, listening to the dulcet tones of an apparently omnipotent woman telling you “Great job deciding to move your body today!” or “Begin your workout now!!”. It also tracks your runs/steps/distance, and genuinely starts from a place of no experience. It may feel silly running for sixty second then walking for ninety seconds eight times in a row, but it truly is effective.  

    Not Work-ing

    Sadly, no, this does not mean I have been off work for four months. Rather, not work-ing refers to an intentional, personal switch in focus from on work to on not work.

    Not work-ing is caring far more about not-work things in your life than the work ones. Reading more. Planning trips. The aforementioned movement. Kevbo. Motorcycle rides. Family, friends, relationships in general. I don’t dwell on my work stress anymore. She is the secular version of letting go and letting god and it is golden.

    Highlights of not work-ing: annual trip to the Bay Area to see friends and Aaron’s family in June, having friends come to stay this past week, hosting floovies (the act of watching a movie while eating food that matches said movie), getting my Italian paperwork up-to-date, making future long-term plans.

    Inspo-ing

    Last weekend Aaron and I saw F1: The Movie and no, it was not the best movie I’ve ever seen. But it WAS the best movie theatre movie I’ve seen in years, and I had truly forgotten just how good a good movie theatre movie experience can be. I am actually debating going to see it again while it’s in theatres because guys, it was just so PRETTY AND FUN. A++ soundtrack, score, cinematography, Kerry Condon, unexpected shots of England. Brad Pitt is the worst but Javier Bardem is not. These days, I take what I can get. I’m okay with a really good movie experience being inspiring.

    Writing???

    HECK YEAH I WROTE WRITING.

    Last but not least, I have started a new something which may or may not go anywhere other than an amorphous Word doc of indeterminate size and shape.

    And that, my friends, is wonderful.  

    So there you have it! Some absolutely made-up gerunds to sum up the last four months. Sorry guys, as they say: you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.

  • Home Things

    We’re not going to talk about how potentially far-distant home ownership is. Nope. This is, instead, a post about home things in the context of the house where we’re renting.

    Some background:

    I’m in Portland right now, writing this from the lobby of my hotel while on an evening break from attending my first ever APGA conference. (That’s APGA as in American Public Garden Association, not Advocates Professional Golf Association. There can be a lot of grass in both, but it’s an important distinction nonetheless.) Today is day two of conferencing, day three of Portlanding, and whoof, I am already exhausted.

    Traveling for work is one of those life tasks that seemed glamorous and fashionably professional when I was a kid. Thirteen year old Kathy, my favorite lens through which to measure my adult achievements in life, would not believe that I am seated on a creamy leather banquette, a fluted pint of beer next to my laptop, typing away with an array of brass lights and murals and cocktails for company. She’d probably think it was freaking sweet.

    Alas, thirteen year old Kathy is not thirty-three, and she doesn’t understand that your own bed is the best bed, and home is home. (And that conferences, educational and inspirational and well-meaning as they are, are by nature, conferences. And are thus deeply exhausting exercises in note-taking, coffee-consumption-regulating, and in 2022, N95 masking.)

    So last night, when one of the coolest people I work with (honestly, she is so cool) invited me to her local best friend’s birthday dinner at her home, I was quick to accept. Yesterday happened to be the first full day of summer weather that Portland has seen, so while I’m sure the evening would have been exceptional regardless, it was blessed with the extra magic that is a Summer Solstice full of golden, mid-seventies sunshine and sitting on the grass with olives and soft cheese and chilled white wine with a group of people that haven’t seen the sun for six months. In London this was always the best experience and I am happy to report that it was the same here in Portland.

    The entire evening gave me a really interesting combination of feelings that I haven’t fully processed yet. That’s part of why I’m sitting here, writing about it. First, I was surrounded by such clearly amazing people. One of the women I met had a very similar recent experience to me – she had been living in Brooklyn for 12 years, working in corporate retail, and got laid off in the pandemic. Between that, the sudden distance created by an inability to visit home and her nieces, and the realization that retail is some ruthless-hustle-based bullshit, she decided to move back home and change careers. She felt an even stronger version of the bittersweet longing for Brooklyn that I feel for London, given how long she had lived there. But she knew she made the right decision and she is in the right place now, and she was happy with her imperfect decision because really, all decisions are imperfect.

    The amazing woman whose home we visited, who has the fortune to call the longest day of the year her birthday, had not only the most impeccable taste in all things design, but shares with me some fairly random passions. A jeweller by trade, she specializes in English antique pieces, and has her own collection of enamel Victorian mourning rings (one of my favorite types of antique jewelry), which she pulled out and shared with me on the grass in the backyard while the sun set. She even, as one of her pieces of daily jewelry, wears a Tudor-era memento mori ring – something I have aspired to have of my own for years.

    And then there was her home. An early 1900’s craftsman, with its small porch, original hardwood floors, chartreuse kitchen cabinets, and Persian stairwell runner of salmons-and-oranges-and-browns, was an absolute dream. White brick fireplace. MCM built-ins but a lived in, cream linen sofa. Palette-knifed original artworks and lamps with stained glass shades handmade by her father. An oversized, oil pastel Picasso gallery print the sole work living above the fireplace. Cupboards full of vintage plates and hand-thrown ceramics. And above all, an open, easy grace reflected in her hosting and her own personal energy, that permeated every part of the place. As I told her when I thanked her for her hospitality before catching an Uber home, “Not to sound completely creepy, but I love everything about the home you’ve created. It is wonderful.”

    All of which is the background to the first sentence I wrote here. We’re not going to talk about home ownership and how distant that feels. We’re going to celebrate the progress in what my home is now, an imperfect place that I share with a human whose imperfections complement my own, which all works together to create a place that I would very much rather be than in a swank boutique hotel lobby. So while my intent with this post was actually to talk about the specific pieces of interior design progress I’ve made in our own (albeit rented) craftsman bungalow, it turns out the bit I really wanted to talk about was how it’s all come together to feel like a home worth missing.

  • Nest-y

    I am not going to start this post talking about how I’m sitting in a coffee shop, because damned if a quick scroll through my last several posts didn’t show me that’s almost exclusively what I write about.

    If you follow me on Instagram or speak to me on even a sort-of regular basis, you’ll know about my fairly big news. I mentioned last time I wrote that there was some potentially really exciting stuff going on. Usually that’s almost a guarantee that said really exciting stuff will immediately implode and lead nowhere at all, but I’m here to tell you that THIS time, the opposite has happened.

    One week ago today was my last day as a retail manager.

    MIND. BLOWN.

    I promised myself in 2019, somewhere in-between ringing up customers and getting sale stickers stuck on my arm at the Anthropologie in Spitalfields, that it would be my last Christmas in retail. Christmas 2020 did see me in a shop (or it would have, if we’d been allowed to be open), but I wouldn’t quite call it retail, since my role at UAL helped me vastly expand my skillset and provided so many opportunities outside of working a salesfloor (and, COVID or no COVID, it was 9a-5p, Mon-Fri). I didn’t immediately think I’d be breaking my word when I joined back up with World Market last May, but when I took a store manager position in Santa Cruz in June, it did seem a bit like the death knell of that promise nearly two years past.

    Nothing extraordinarily bad happened while I was in Santa Cruz. It just served as a reminder of how nothing about retail had changed, but holy shit, I certainly had. I kept looking at my resume and how close I had been to achieving something different with my career. At the end of July, I decided enough was enough. I started applying elsewhere.

    By the end of August, I’d gotten nowhere. The holiday season was closing fast, and so one Sunday, out of respect for my district manager – who I’ve known for nearly a decade – I made myself a new promise. Christmas 2021 would be my last in the business and I needed to do the right thing and wait until the new year to pursue another job. And because life is life, roughly 24 hours after I made myself that promise, I heard back from a job application I’d sent out the week prior for easily the dreamiest and most ideal of any of the jobs I had applied for.

    When I wrote last, I was two interviews in and a week away from hearing that I got the job. I write this now having finished my first full week as an Experience & Program Coordinator at a historic house and garden. So it’s been a really nice seven days, even if I am still in disbelief half the time.

    Of all of the amazing things that have happened in those seven days, one of my favorites happened yesterday when I was walking to my car with my new manager. She was asking me how everything was going, and said she hoped it hadn’t been too overwhelming for a first week. I told her that at the risk of continuing to gush about this job (shockingly, I have already gushed quite a lot), I couldn’t be happier. I gave her an abbreviated version of how relieved I was to feel like I’ve finally found a role and career path I can settle into without having to constantly wonder what’s next, because I’m so unsure. She turned to me and said, “Yes! Roots. It’s so great when you finally get to start putting them down.”

    I thought immediately of what I wrote last January, a very wild nine months ago, about roots. The exhaustion of the what’s next and my inability to do anything but feed that vision. But I think, dare I say it, I’ve sorted out that rootless self.

    And now it’s time to get a little nest-y.

    I’ve started drinking more tea than coffee again, I’ve hung stuff on the walls, I’ve started to build a home with another person. Please stay tuned for more of the total craziness that is the fact that my life, for once, will not be so crazy anymore. I’m thirty-two, chill, and pretty fucking thrilled about it.

  • The Bucket Theory

    I’m a chronic mom-caller. Like, I may live over three thousand miles away from my mother, and I may be a grown-ass thirty-year-old woman, but if I go more than 2-3 days without speaking to my mom, it’s weird. I used to call her on my way home from work, and now that I have my own place, I call her as soon as I’m home, eating my pre-made dinner on the couch while I tell her about my day and listen in turn about hers. I’ll call her on my days off when I have literally nothing new to tell her. I’ll call her when I discover pre-filled strawberry jam and cream scones for sale at Tesco. Chron-ic.

    Whether it’s because I do such a faultless job of this on a regular basis, or because my mom has a tendency to feel like she’s a ‘bother’ if she’s the one that calls me (“I never know what you’re doing! You’re so busy. You could be at work.” “Mom, I keep telling you. If you call me and I’m busy, I just won’t pick up the phone.” I digress.) – my mom hardly ever calls me. But this afternoon I was off work, sitting at a coffee shop, when my phone rang and it was my mom. Calling me!

    We talked about a lot of things, as we always do. Work stress, life stress, good things, challenging things. And at one point, somewhere between good things and challenging things, I mentioned my Bucket Theory. I feel like I tell everyone and their mother about my Bucket Theory, so I was 110% sure I’d already not only mentioned it to my own, but explained it in depth. But it turns out I hadn’t, and because I will never not enjoy the sound of my own voice – especially when expounding my own life views – when she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard about your Bucket Theory” – I LEPT at the opportunity. And as a result, the topic is fresh on my mind, and I figured no time like the present to infect the internet with it.

    So here, un-asked for, is my Bucket Theory.

    We spend an inordinately large amount of time while we’re growing up and getting older being told exactly What Will Make Us Happy. People, society, strangers, LIFE. They all act like there’s a one-size-fits-all formula for how to make a life for yourself that genuinely brings you joy.

    What I spent my twenties doing was unlearning all of that.

    Attaining happiness is only universal in that it can always be broken down into buckets. One bucket, six buckets, twenty buckets, every person is different. The buckets come in all different sizes. Maybe yours are all tiny and easily filled; maybe some are bigger, and need a regularly scheduled top up. But the constant between everyone’s buckets is this: the sum of their parts is a Satisfying, Happy Life. (Accidentally just typed Lie, and I’m gonna go ahead and ignore what that typo is trying to tell me.) The only way your buckets can be Wrong is if they hurt people in the process of being filled. As long as you have peaceful, kind buckets, I truly think your only priority in life should be to define them and fill them however you see fit.

    I believe I’ve gotten to the place I am in life because I figured out what my buckets are and made a big deal out of prioritizing filling them the fuck up. Having my family in my life is a big bucket – but for me, geographic closeness isn’t a requirement of keeping that full. I rely heavily and happily on technology to do so. Having a job that’s satisfying, but also allows me creative freedom in my style and on my days off, is another big old bucket. It needs a regular top up in that I always want to feel driven and like I’m developing the people around me, but I’m quite certain my career bucket will never get any bigger. It will always play second fiddle (second…bucket?) to others.

    And then there are the surprise buckets – Being Near Medieval English Things turned out to be a pretty major one. Nobody told me when I was thirteen that where I live would bring me more happiness than my college degree itself. Tattoos. Financial Independence. Writing – well, no surprise there. Seven year old Kathy could have accurately drawn the size of that bucket right after she wrote her first short story about a girl sneaking off from a family picnic to find a dragon in a hillside cave. It will probably always be my biggest bucket.

    But if your career bucket is your biggest, wahey to you! You will find no judgement here. The same if being physically close to those you love is a big bucket. I get that too. Making a family. Having a dog. Achieving fame. Immersing yourself in other cultures. Helping the environment. Listening to great music. Chocolate chip cookies. They are your buckets. It is your life. Too many people get down on themselves because their buckets are different or strange or maybe even because they’re not different enough. I assure you, it doesn’t matter. Nobody has to deal with whether or not something brings you happiness and fulfillment except You.

    So if you’re looking for an extra bit of happy in your life, take a look at your buckets. And once you figure them out, there are only two things you need to do: chase their fulfillment like nobody’s business, and never apologize for it.