the work in progress

There's a particular kind of week that doesn't have a clean name. Not bad, not good. Just full. The kind where you're laughing at an art gallery on a Thursday night with a friend who always makes it a point to remind you who you are. The kind where you also go home and sit with questions you don't have answers to yet.

That has been the last two weeks for me.

First Thursdays in Pioneer Square reminded me why I love this city when I actually let myself show up for it. The art walk did what good art is supposed to do: made me feel something without demanding I explain what. But honestly it started before that. It's been one of those stretches where Seattle has been showing out and I've been present enough to notice. Sunset walks at Alki Beach where the water does that thing and you remember oh, I actually live here. Morning coffees at Toasted that taste exactly like it should. Pilates at Breathe Hot Yoga leaving me wrung out and somehow more myself than when I walked in.

This is actually a concept in cognitive psychology called embodied cognition, the idea that the mind and body aren't separate systems, that how we move through the world physically is inseparable from how we process it mentally. Which is just science's way of confirming what I already knew: sometimes you have to move your body to clear your head.

It also helps to be around your people to help clear out noise, as contradictory as that sounds knowing my loud ass family. I've felt lucky to have been able to spend so much time with family lately, including meeting the newest addition, my sister's baby, which brings my official niece and nephew count to a whopping sixteen. Sixteen. I know all their names, ages, and birthdays. Most of the time. There is genuinely no place on earth that makes me feel more like myself than being in a room full of people who have known me my whole life. I would give anything to have that on tap, bottled up and ready for any week that tries me.

In between the workload, I’ve found myself pacing between a thought here and a thought there about some losses from last year. Loving and losing is a remarkable thing. Because in one breath I think, “what an incredibly beautiful thing it is to have had such a marvelous human experience that I'd do it over and over again in a heart beat”. And in the next breath, I feel the punch of how losing leaves you wanting to send up the highest walls on planet earth to protect yourself from ever feeling that close to anyone, that sure of anyone, ever again. I've been letting myself feel all of it though, resisting the urge to push it down and keep moving. So unlike me, I know. It’s partly because I know better and partly because I learned recently that neurogenesis, the brain's ability to literally grow new neurons, happens most actively during periods of emotional processing and change.

Sitting with hard feelings isn't just poetic. It's actually how you rebuild, on a cell level.

What I wasn't prepared for is how moving on doesn't look the same for everyone, and how disorienting it is to watch from the outside. It's crazy because I'll be mid-scroll and catch a win on my feed or hear good news through the grapevine and my immediate reaction is always both things at once: genuinely happy for them and quietly aching at the distance. Not because I feel a need to close the gap, but because passively missing what was while actively accepting what is, is my current reality. And I'm okay with that. Some may say that's my quirk, or what makes me different from most. That I can be hurt by people I deeply loved, feel disappointed in how I was treated, and yet still feel no hatred in my heart for them. It's a trait I used to hate about myself, being able to categorize my feelings like that and allow two polarizing emotions to sit with me simultaneously. But I'm learning that's not a flaw, that's a kind of freedom. Some people are committed to their bitterness and honestly I think we should just let them have it.

(my proof of no pregnancy arriving this week may or may not be responsible for at least forty percent of the above.)

School is still winning most days. Barely, but winning. Although I will say, my exams and papers have been surprisingly holding their own, which I'm choosing to take as proof that I function best under pressure. I can see the finish line though, and that changes everything. Lately my dreams consist solely of summer. Girl trips. Long afternoons. Hot outfits. Good music. No deadlines. The kind of joy that's loud and doesn't apologize. I'm holding onto that image like it owes me money.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, somehow, I became a social media manager.

My sister is launching a new business, The Littles' Play Group, and I could not be more proud of her if I tried. Seeing her get excited about something that belongs completely to her, not her job, not her roles, just her and her creativity, does something to me I can't quite explain. So when she needed someone to help build her presence online, of course it was going to be me. I didn't even think twice about it. Creating for her scratches the same itch as creating for myself, maybe more, because there's something about pouring into someone you love that hits different than pouring into your own work. The account is actively blowing up, the metrics are insane, and I'm not one to take credit but I'm absolutely going to take credit here. To the point that my sister is convinced I could do this for a living and honestly the numbers aren't disagreeing with her. Which does also beg the question of why I can't seem to locate this same level of effort and tenacity when it comes to my own work, my own blog, my own creative life. But that's a conversation for me and the therapist who I can't seem to get a hold of.

It has also expectedly consumed more of my time than I'd like to admit. My plate was already full. Overflowing, even. And I just slid another dish on there and said sure, we'll make it work. But Steve Harvey said it best: don't complain about a full plate when the goal was to eat. And I had to just sit with that for a second. Because yeah. This is what I asked for. Opportunities, purpose, people to show up for. The fullness is the point. I just have to remember to breathe between bites.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, retail therapy came through for me the way it reliably does. A few new pieces, a few moments of "yes, this is exactly right," and my nervous system just... settled. Dressing intentionally has always been how I process. Some people journal. I find creative outlets. So it felt like the universe was paying attention when a fashion collaboration landed in my inbox right in the thick of it, a reminder that what I've built is visible and real even when I can't see it clearly from where I'm standing. "Not yet" and "not ever" are not the same thing, and sometimes the universe sends you proof.

So that's the honest version of the last two weeks. Tender and complicated and punctuated with really good shoes. And if you're reading this, this is my third post in six weeks, one week on, one week off, and somehow that little rhythm is the most consistent I've been since starting this blog. Given that I am so clearly nearly drowning in life right now, I think that deserves its own round of applause. I'm not sure what the next two weeks hold but I'm showing up for them differently than I used to, a little softer with myself and a little more willing to let things be full without needing them to be finished. The brain is growing new neurons, the plate is full, the metrics are insane, and summer is coming.

Still a work in progress.

But then again, that was always the point.

the long pause

always, in all ways ♥