Cafe: My counter | In my cup: Yunnan Gold Needle
Well hello again! I still exist, I'm still alive, and Studio Kal hasn't gone the way of the dodo. Still, a lot has changed and this last year especially has been a whirlwind. There was plenty of doubts, considerations, choices, ups and downs, losses and gains...
My main idea with these blogs is to go to a coffee shop of sorts and write, however there were a list of chores glaring at me... Such is the life of a homeowner. Yes, you read that right. Homeowner! After what felt like countless showings, hours of searching, and getting outbid left and right, we (Brandon and I) finally managed to secure a place to call our own. Even though we would have liked an actual stand-alone house, we're grateful for the opportunity to get out of the money suck that was our apartment. The parts I'm most excited about are the spacious kitchen, patio that opens to the large community space, and a loft that I have turned into an office. Owning a home is one continuous project to make it your own, and we had our work cut out for us since the house was painted 9-10 different colors, 7 you could see as you spun around near the entry. Oof!
One of the reasons why we moved to where we did was due to my day job's office thinking of moving slightly west and south, maybe 5-10 miles or so, which would be closer to a majority of the workers. Soon after our moving, it was announced at my day job they were moving the office not southwest, but northeast by 15 miles. And it was required to come in at LEAST 3 days a week. It's not ideal, but I didn't have much of a choice. It didn't take long for the hour of rush hour traffic to work, working 8-5 in customer service while handling 3 new trainees, creating documentation, and the hour of worse rush hour traffic took a horrid toll on my mental health (having depression and anxiety doesn't help, but that's another post!). The time I wasn't doing something work-related, I was recovering from work. Zero work/life balance. Not the way anyone should live. I barely had any time to escape and work on Studio Kal. I put my foot down. If they wanted me to continue working there, I would need to work remotely most of the week. I had proven myself worthy as I had done it for a year and had received praise from customers. Luckily it worked, and after some time my mental health bounced back to my usual levels. I'm glad to find my voice in all this, but this is a move I was only able to make since my being there was critical. Was it time for a vacation? Yeah. I was overdue. (so was the world, thanks COVID).
January work had calmed down enough for me to make my escape to LAS VEGAS BABYYY!!!! But not for the reasons many go to Vegas. It was to go see my sister (finally)! Life and work finally gave me an opening and I took it. It was years in the making, and Minnesota was super cold and snowy. I had never been to a place without at least some snow during the winter before, so it was a new sensation going outside barefoot in lounge wear at 8am and not being cold, but perfectly warm. Plenty of times my sister would see me hanging out outside and say “What are you doing, ya crazy?!” Going from 10 below to 55 above was NICE. We didn't say in Vegas for long, we took a road trip to California, about a half hour up the coast from San Diego. It was refreshing, I had so much fish, and I managed to even get a little sunburn (in true Minnesotan fashion, ha!). The sand was just as warm and soft as I remembered when I visited L.A. as kid with my dad. I honestly could go on and on, so I'll add it to the blog idea list. Bottom line, it was a good time reminiscing with my sister, experiencing some hidden gems of Vegas, and embracing something of a UV index.
Things did start warming up in Minnesota and while feeling creative, I wanted to get back into the pattern of editing. Work in Adobe Bridge for a bit, then pull it into Photoshop, wait forever and a day for it to load up on my basic laptop, aaand time to edit! But wait, zooming and panning aren't too smooth... everything is running slower than usual, or not at all. Even restarting, deleting files, moving files to an external hard drive, formatting, nothing worked. My laptop was had reached its limit. This is where having a partner with a love of computers comes handy. My sweet Brandon, who built his computer that doubles for work and playing games, helped me build my own! It was a great couples project. It has a few fancy things since they're hand-me-downs from his machine, plus his previous monitor, but it's got the power and graphics for me to edit photos however I like or need. Again I could go on and on, but that is something worth it's own post.
If you have made it this far, CONGRATS!! But more importantly, thank you for sticking it out throughout my novella of a first blog post! I'll try to post at least bi-monthly.
Let me know what you think! And if you have any tea/coffee shop or cafe reccs, pass them along! I love checking out new places.