Birthday Blessings
Thoughts on another year of living, including a non-exhaustive list of highlights, from hiking in Panama to adopting a puppy
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Hi friends.
It was my birthday on Friday. I turned 29. I kept oscillating between feeling happy to be alive and resentful to be alive. Like, what the hell are we all doing here? What am I doing here? Does everyone feel this way? Or am I having a depressive episode? But seriously, I’m mostly glad to be here, still kicking, still writing, still trying the best I can to love the people around me. Despite everything. I normally save annual reflections for the end of the year, but I think I want to change that.
Having a summer birthday, I’m usually focused on resting and playing. My birthday just becomes a day of extra rest and play, blurred by all the other days of rest and play. The last two years, that has looked like traveling in the van for extended periods of time, putting up my OOO message, ignoring emails and texts, absorbing every ray of sunshine, and accumulating dirt between my toes. I’m free from responsibility. I’m untethered. I’m ageless. This year is different though. Steve has a new job so we’re not on the road. I took a break from work in May to move and settle. And then it was back to work. I’ve set some ambitious goals for myself, and I’m deep in curriculum as part of a leadership program. It’d be so easy to just let time go by, to get to the end of 2022 without reflecting on the precious and painful moments from the past. There are many.
So here goes my non-exhaustive list of little and big things. This year, I sewed myself a wardrobe, stopped waiting for the perfect moment and adopted a puppy named Kona, taught her how to sit and stay and shake, quit drinking alcohol indefinitely, started painting my nails again, hiked over Panama’s continental divide, ate a cacao seed straight from the pod, forgave myself for crashing a truck, bought myself peonies, learned to manage my anger better, learned how to love myself even when I’m sad, helped edit a book by writers on Death Row, started volunteering for Empowerment Avenue to elevate incarcerated artists, wrote an essay about grief for Outside, visited Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon, lived in the van for two months, read more books by non-white writers, took online classes about writing essays and long-form stories, detached my identity from my job and success, traded chaos for calm, ate a corndog for the first time in more than a decade, grew microgreens in my kitchen, celebrated Día de los Muertos, bought a new bike, enjoyed biking again, paid for new headshots, took my own headshots, met my friends’ babies, met my friends’ dogs, witnessed friends get married, celebrated three years of marriage with Steve, embraced being more indoorsy, stopped and restarted climbing, made a new friend in the sauna, moved to Portland, remembered how much I love rain, smelled all the roses, got a tattoo.
In my more moody moods, I’ve been thinking a lot about how life feels so little. Too delicate and yet not delicate enough. But then when you string together all these little moments, they become something long and winding and big. A big life. An expansive life. A beautiful story, unfolding moment by moment.
With love,
Amelia
Monthly Favorites
Reading: Just started There There by Tommy Orange. Plus, stories written by incarcerated writers like this one from Jose Armendariz, who I’m honored to work with through Empowerment Avenue
Listening:
Baking: This key lime pie from A Cozy Kitchen was so easy and tasted DIVINE
Eating: Yuzu Shio ramen at Afuri Izakaya, veggie pie at Ranch PDX, Nashville hot chicken sandwich at Flew the Coop, California burrito at Mis Tacones, lavender tea boba at Tea Bar, and mezze at Tusk
Buying: Obsessssssssed with these Nat + Noor hair clips my friend convinced me to get. Now I want everything they make.
Making: I recently lended my sewing skills as a pattern tester (my first time!) for the #SRPaula crop top from Sycamore Road. Here’s how it turned out:
Learning: How to find joy in climate action
Testing: The best size-inclusive active dresses for a forthcoming gear story. Send me your favorites!
Want more to read? Explore the archive for more essays like this one. And to connect with me directly, shoot me an email and/or follow me on Instagram and Twitter.