A Welcome Letter
A little story of why I'm writing...what a storied home means to me.
When I was in college, a bit overly confident, yet just the right amount of brave, I knew two things I loved doing most of all: writing and making people laugh. Since I was a tiny girl, equipped with my parents’ brick of a laptop that felt hot under my wrists as I wrote, I loved the power of sharing my thoughts through the guise of storytelling. As an eighteen year old, that looked like a pink Wordpress site I so wittily named “Addytude,” an ode to the humor I hoped would spill from my fingertips. I wrote about my mom and my grandma and how wearing house shoes made me feel near to them, I wrote about the bat infestation of my childhood home, my lifelong dreams of writing a book, cries of thankfulness for my friends, a stray movie review or two.
I graduated, struggling with what to do with my life, struggling with the fear that all I had done to prepare myself for adulthood was worthless, and then all of a sudden, writing, my favorite solace, felt ridden with anxiety. It was something I knew I should do, but oddly, everything I knew I should do, down to the simplest of watering my plants in the Arkansas summer heat – something so obvious, something so necessary – became something I couldn’t. I worked in state government for a time, answering the phone and scheduling meetings and formatting notes of important meetings and making sure the Governor knew his meetings were over and people were waiting on him for even more meetings. One night on my way home, I was sent with the files to the Governor’s mansion. And after setting them carefully on his desk, as to not disturb his reading, he asked what I had studied in college. I told him a few things, but ended with how much I loved to write, how he might’ve read an article or two of mine in a business magazine even. I had seen a copy of it on his desk a while back.
“Well, do you still write?”
I told him, “No, but after the wedding I’m going to get back into it.”
And the Governor responded that there always will be reason not to. Why not now?
Did I listen to him? Maybe a little, but not as much as I should have.
Fast forward now nearly four years, as I type this on my library floor, sitting beside my Kit as she bounces in her chair and gets bored of every activity wildly fast. (She is four months old and wants to crawl, so unfortunately – and understandably – a bouncy chair with a crinkly book isn’t cutting it.) This is my day job…the greatest one I could have possibly asked Jesus for…being her mom (and Annie’s, too.)
And I’m a little over a year and a half into my night “job” of content creating, something I never expected to stumble upon, but am so glad I did. All it took was a viral video of my 100-year-old tiny little cottage, freshly renovated, and somehow I sit here with people interested enough to read my stories, see my interior design, watch me make my coffee and raise my girls.
At first, I felt embarrassed by it. I didn’t want anyone from my hometown to know what I was up to on the internet. But now, I see the way creating for an audience has changed my mind and how I think. How it gave me the confidence to live the way I’d love to…slowly. I’ve slowed down to notice every single thing. To notice how beautiful the crepe myrtle between mine and my neighbor’s driveway is, how sweet Kit’s little books look stacked on her shelf, how comforting black coffee is every morning, even for just the smell. The safety of a clothes dryer mid-load, Faith Hill and Norah Jones and Ella Fitzgerald and Martina McBride, the sounds of making dinner with golf playing in the background, Annie watching for Price to come home from work. Yes, I capture some moments to share. But mostly, I’ve begun capturing moments to save, to fill up my 1,000-picture cheap photo albums with pictures of our home and Price and bathtime in the kitchen sink and one million pictures of the same things, except one day Kit will be able to return to her childhood in a way she wouldn’t have if I hadn’t learned to love every single thing.
It’s felt almost like returning to something I love: telling stories. Just in a different way.
I read all of my childhood journals a few weekends ago…ten years of painful insight into how obnoxious I have been for most of my life. Of course, I was a child when I wrote them, but still. I read them as if I were reading a YA series I’d never read before, as if I didn’t know exactly what happened in the end, dogearing entries to read to my mom, laugh with my dad over. I couldn’t believe all the things I’d just completely forgotten. I believed all the things I never will.
And still today, I’m thinking about those journals. Just so thankful I’d written them down, despite my wariness of ever letting my babies near them.
I bring all this up to say this: I love sharing my stories. I always have, and I always will. From weekend plans to thoughts on the Bachelor or recaps of my weekend, where I found my comfy white couch, my review of the latest book I gave five stars on Goodreads, what I made my family for dinner…I don’t know why I ever stopped, but I’m glad I’ve started again.
And because I’m significantly more profound in my written words than my spoken, my writing needed a home to exist altogether. So here we are, a mix of everything I hope you’ve found me interesting for: my home, my dedication to living slowly, my love for the Father and all He’s given me, and maybe, if you’ve paid close enough attention to detail, my humor bahahah.
And at the end of the day, this is what we all are looking to build: a storied home.
Welcome…I hope you stay a while at least!
Talk soon.
A
