Today is a great day.  I am going to take a lunch.  I cleaned my desk.  I cleaned and organized the print station.  I have time to work on long-term work tasks.  The skies are cool blue.  I have tomorrow off.  I googled how many days until my wedding (24).  I used the calculator to find out how old I am again (27).  A pleasant surprise, since I've been walking around as a 28 year old lately.  I still have 2 years and 3 months to knock off my "Before 30 Goals."  It's fall, so of course I'm thinking about goals.  I can't really remember any of my before 30 goals except to buy a house.  Which I guess John already took care of for me? Not really sure if it counts.  I don't feel the sense of accomplishment.  But maybe that's part of it.  It goes hand in hand with a lot I have been learning  - or rather - am trying to learn.  Like being less independent and overpowering.  Learning to respond with "Perhaps, but here's why I'd rather not" rather than with "No" and an intense expression.  Learning to be okay with not feeling that sense of accomplishment.  Being okay with sometimes just needing someone else to help. Being okay with others needing help too.

We're reading through a marriage book right now and I found myself in the chapter entitled "Loving the Stranger."  The author discusses the season in every new marriage when you lose the glasses and see all the flaws in your spouse.  The "honeymoon" phase is over and you find yourself wondering "Who is this person? This isn't who I married."  This will probably happen to John and I, and it will come as an absolute surprise, because right now we both really feel like we're pretty aware of each other's flaws.  At least the little ones that tend to drive you mad about each other. And a lot of the big ones too.  This didn't strike me much in the chapter, but what did was how the author talked about those changes.  He said, you change.  You are one person.  Then you become another person.  Marriage changes you.  Babies change you.  New careers change you.

It shouldn't be so shocking to me, but it was.  For the past two years, I've been telling John how I just don't feel like myself.  I even started a private blog where I began writing just for me, hoping to remember myself.  It could sound humorous, but it's actually kind of a frightening feeling.  Not feeling you for so long.  At times it made me worry that I shouldn't be in this relationship - like maybe I couldn't "be me" - though I knew it wasn't anything John was doing.  Never before have I had such an amazing friend who allowed me to be myself and encouraged and forgave and listened and loved.  It couldn't be him.  It had to be work.  Or all the other changes.  As I've likely said here before, we came to realize that in a matter of months, I'd moved out, changed jobs, entered my first committed relationship and grown a year older.  It was a lot of change at once.

I've been waiting ever since for me to remember me, somehow fall back into stride with myself, or crawl my way back to that ease and internal sense of self. And that is what struck me yesterday as I read.  I won't.  I've changed.  It's not about waiting or finding. I'm just the person I am now. I'm not as kind.  I complain more.  I'm really strong though, until I'm not.  In fact, I'm much more strong and consistent, I don't let things shake my emotions. I don't work out a lot.  I have a hard time waking up early, but when I do, I find I still love it.  I like porters and not really blue moon. I sometimes drink my coffee black and actually like it.  I order vanilla lattes. On hot summer days, I love to sip cold gin and often choose it over whiskey at a bar. If I have more than two drinks, I'll know it. I get angry if I spend a whole night with a group of friends and come home feeling as far if not further away from them. I don't keep my room clean.  I love gardening.  I can even put up with seeing a few spiders out in it without tossing in my gloves and going inside.  I have chickens.  I freaking love my chickens. I don't know if I want to be in marketing.  I hate saying something I don't believe is true. If I do say something, I hate saying it weak or unconvincingly. I cuss sometimes.  I rarely ever write.

This isn't who I was.  But I just realized, it is who I am. I get to choose to change, but who I am right now is really who I am.  And that will always be true.

Yesterday, I made a choice toward one single change.  And I'm going to make it again today.  And hopefully one day I won't complain much.  And I'll be kinder.  I'll be gentle again.  I'll respond openly.  I'll laugh more. I'll drop this new habit of cussing.  I'll put my clothes away and not toss them on the floor.

Marriage is going to change me.  Our tiny house will have to change me.  And a dozen other things along the way will change me.  I won't be the same person I am today.  I will be a new me.  And hopefully a better one.

I've been writing here for 9 years, recording events and thoughts and memories. Collecting.

This is the only place where I'm the dozen girls all at once - the dozen me's I've been over the past decade, changing and then changing again. Waking up to meet someone new.

I started this blog soon after my first real heart break, a couple years after I got my braces off, during my first year not living at home, the year I graduated high school, months before I started college.  Before marketing at UIE, Starbucks, Linville, Weaver and LMN.  Before any of my classmates and childhood friends married or had kids or had second kids or bought houses.  Before I could buy whiskey. Before I stopped getting french manicures. Before I fell in love with Keats. Before I bought the Toddler. Before I gave Todd a hampster for Christmas because I thought it would be funny. Before I smuggled a book in my dress under my graduation gown. Before I ever went to Vegas.  Before I went to Vegas again. Before I stayed with Kim in Nashville for over a month. Before I applied for the Cambridge Gates Trust.  Before I received the news that I was not awarded the scholarship. Before I was a backup dancer for a tween christian hip hop artist? Before I got a concussion on a sail boat. Before Sparks wrote lame books. Before The Office. Before the Blueberries.  Before Beau. Before moving out on my own. Before I pierced my nose. Before my childhood dog died. Before a dozen other goodbyes.

I think I just knew that paths were parting in my soul and all around me and the only way I'd be able to get back or make sense of it was to start collecting tiny pieces in long run-on sentences. I'd begun to learn the painful lesson that many, many people will be happy to tell you who you are and who you've been - and many of them will not be true - though they don't mean to tell you lies. And more dangerous still, those who knew you may forget you.  And if they can so quickly forget what is true, perhaps a person can as easily forget themself too.






Many things have changed.  And some things have not.

First post in 2005.

A couple hours before getting engaged in 2014

The Great Abyss from The Music Bed on Vimeo.

I was asked the other day what my friends would say was the one thing they most appreciate about me.  I replied, "that I am consistent."  Well my interrogator disagreed, and it has me thinking why I gave that answer.  "Are you sure you're not being humble?  They wouldn't say fun? I think they'd say fun." He's right, my friends probably wouldn't actually give, "consistent." After all, who does? I told him I might be being overly-confident, that they might not say consistent.  But I didn't want them to say "fun" - everyone in their twenties is fun - but few are consistent.

Somewhere along my journey, or perhaps all along, being consistent became one of my biggest measures.

Consistent = Trustworthy.

You can fake anything for a day, you can sell yourself as anything to a new group. So when people seem to become a color wheel of characters and styles, I give a wide berth to their spin.

I'm really not the most fun person in the room.  Nor the funniest.  I'm not the smartest.  I'm not the prettiest.  Lord knows I'm not the tallest. But whatever I am, regardless of how I may be feeling, I try to be the same person every day in every room.

I've been writing on this same blog at the same url for nearly nine years. I've published 3, 116 posts here. This blog is not the prettiest or wittiest in the room either.  But, it is consistent and honest.  And to me, that counts.

Oatmeal is a power food.  It is to everyone. But to me, oatmeal is also my 'game day food.'  It is steal cut comfort and confidence.  It reminds me that I win sometimes, and I work hard all the time.  It reminds me that I'm strong.  It reminds me that I'm a morning person.  That I'm a team player.  That I'm a striker.  That size matters less than strength and speed. That I have good coaches in my life - and that I'm good at listening to them.  And above all, it reminds me that I have a few very loving and strong people behind me - like my dad, who I'd hear out in the kitchen banging pots, closing cabinets, running the tap, cooking me oatmeal on game days.  And now my Beau, who set his alarm early to make sure I had a cup of coffee waiting for me in his kitchen when I came in at 6:30am.

That's why this morning, I had oatmeal.

I feel my humanity ignored. When I'm walking down the street I don't feel recognized by strangers as another, like them.  I feel unattractive. Unnoticed. Un-human. At work, I feel more and more like a piece of a machine, a tiny mechanism to be tinkered and fixed.  At best left alone to operate efficiently and clean, leaving as little loss as possible along the way. Replaceable. One in a line that can be switched, changed, unnoticed and unnamed.

It could have something to do with Brave New World.  Each day I've spent my commute lost in the laboratories and Fetus assembly lines, carried along in their pre-conditioned lives.

It could be my work.  Could be our consumer-loving new world, driven by the twin demons of large corporations and personal autonomy obsessions. Could be my perspective and lack of attention to my own humanity.

You Can't Eat Beauty

Oscar Winner Lupita Nyong'o Speech

I don't take nearly enough time to sit and meditate.  After cleaning up my room last night I sat on my bed and pulled out an old scrap book full of cards that have been given to me and special words spoken over me.  It was only 20 minutes or so, but it was encouraging.  I like being reminded that I'm the same person I was 9 years ago; sometimes I feel so disconnected from that girl.  I live in a completely different world - I spend my days mostly with a new set of people, in new surroundings, analyzing new information, being perceived in new ways and processing through new thoughts.  I don't feel I'm in too much danger of losing my true self... not really any way, but I do feel the tiredness of it all, of moment by moment being so many other things in the eyes of other people. It's nice to sit on my bed, and be just me, just by myself with no room for misconceptions.

I saw this quote on this sweet ladies's blog today.  It resonates with my thoughts lately - on everything.  If you have to tell people you are, you probably aren't.

Being powerful is like being a lady, if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.   

- Margaret Thatcher

And if you ask me, she was quite a lot of both. ;)
[And how did I NOT KNOW she died 2 months ago?!]

Would it seem too honest for me to admit that just last night I stood in my kitchen thinking, $H**, why did I write that today?!  Not that writing it or not writing it would have changed anything.  But I felt it all stirring up inside me as I stood listening to an obvious comparison that no one ever wants to hear.  And my consensus - if I'm comparing, I'm losing.  No doubt about it.  It's hard to listen about others who have accomplished your dreams, by your age.  I found myself longing to do something truly great.  And I found my motivation to be completely ungreat.  I just wanted to make people regret not betting on me.  I wanted all those who have treated me poorly, overlooked me or rejected me to wish they hadn't.  Wrong.  I know.  I'm completely aware of it.  But it was true.  I was hurting and I just wanted to prove that I was better.  Though I was being anything but better in that moment.  All this was raging inside of me last night.

I have so many dreams.  And I don't want to let my motivation in any of them become skewed.  I want my goal to be to bring glory to God, healing and encouragement to others.  And I want the people who did bet on me to smile.  The ones who have told me all along that I could do it - I want them to be in my mind and my heart as I work toward those things. 

Scary  how quickly our motivation can get off.  Scarier to think that we could accomplish our dreams and goals, and lose the joy we were meant to have amidst that moment. 

Today, it is about who I am separate of the things I have accomplished or the letters after (or before) my name.  We are what we do repeatedly - not just our one time accomplishments.  We are made in our daily choices, and motivations.  That's where we're forged.  I want to be forged true. Someone who celebrates with others' accomplishments, weeps with their heartaches, and is always motivated to do the great thing out of love... and the small one. 

This has been the lesson of my last 2 years.  And my fight last night... and this morning.  But today, I remembered who I am.

(I really like her^ )

6 Years

I missed the big grand day (May 23rd), but Hope is an Anchor is 6 years old.  I have officially been rambling on this site for a very long time.  I've recorded my thoughts, experiences, adventures and to the best of my ability, the people who have shaped the major part of my adult life thus far.  Tied here is my MC tour, graduation, first quarter at University, countless hours of studying, writing, researching, and (thankfully) unnumbered coffees.  I processed through all four years of my undergrad here, wrestled through what would come next, applied for the Rhodes and Gates scholarships, felt the excitement of nomination and the serious pain of denial.  I've written about heartaches in codes that perhaps only I and a few other scholars know how to transcribe.  I've recorded favorite quotes and poems.  Odd pieces of conversation.  I've done my best to copy down favorite strangers I've seen on streets and bus seats.  You might find shadows of the five jobs and 7 managers I've had while living in this literary apartment.  There was graduation.  My first time ever getting "let go."  Saying goodbye to my favorite tree, to my quad, to my campus and friends.  There were lots of trips to California, Montana, Vegas and Nashville.  A whole lot of dreaming.  And somewhere a track of how I've been becoming who I am.  I love this place.  I love that it's mine.  I love that I get to share it with you and host you all in some little way every day.  And yet, I think it might be time for something new. 

This weekend, I remembered who I am.  It was all quite odd.  And who'd have that it would happen not while away, but while home in unknown places in my own city?  I certainly had not. 

I sat last night in silence, on my knees in a place I'd never been.  And I wanted to grow into that silence. 

How strange the power of silence to make us feel small in its confounds and long to be as big and wise and strong.  As all-encompassing.  To make us wants to spread out our arms and reach wide, and reach further.  To somehow fill that space we know we never could.  For what word could fit in silence?  And what hand touch it? 

How silence made me long to mature as it has in all its ancient years.

I kind of want to post this someplace in my room or bathroom.

I feel I'm learning (well, suppose to be learning) kindness at work.
Learning patience in waiting for all my dreams.
Learning joy through daily pains.
Learning trust through uncertainties.
Learning courage through trials.
Learning peace through questions.

I'm learning that everything is a choice, a choice of how we are going to respond.  Are we going to panic?  Or are we going to take a breath when our heart is racing, perhaps take a moment, and choose the better?

Yesterday I was reminding myself:

Joy is a choice, a choice to draw from a source that is
deeper than your sorrows.

I repeated it to my own heart over and over, hoping it would really sink in.  There are many things you cannot change in life.  And you can't change others.  But you always have a choice.  You can always choose who you will be.  You can always choose what type of person you are going to be in this very moment, in this very scene.  You do get to write your own character, even if you don't get to write your whole part or plot.  

Needing to figure out where I want to go...I've been feeling lately like I've been drifting a bit.  There's a level of trusting, and then there's a level of letting yourself just... yes, drift.  I don't want to be a drifter, I don't want to lose sight of the fights I'm called to and the person I was created to be.  This thought has been growing in me, and with it a new question of what and who.  And now, it's starting to feel pretty heated up.  Last week brought some questions at work of what I really want to be doing there.  And now, even more the questions and decisions are coming.  And I'm a bit scared of making the wrong decisions.  Neither A or B or C look exactly like a dream - but which could lead me there? 

Do any of you remember the scene in The Labyrinth where she has to pick between the two doors, and they are both talking to her and confusing her?  One leads right where she needs to go, and the other to the bog of unbearable stench.  She picks the wrong door. 

I feel a bit like I'm standing there listening to two doors mumble on at me and play with my head. 

And life is definitely feeling a bit like a labyrinth lately.  (Minus David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly's eye brows and an awesome cast of Henson puppets.)

I'm grateful for choices.  I'm grateful that the Lord has always opened a door for me.  And I'm grateful that perhaps change is finally here.  But I don't want to miss out by moving too quick.  I guess, I want to find what's best, not just what's easiest (or even what's best paid).  Where am I called to be for this next year of my life?  What is most likely going to open the next door?

I don't want to get stuck.  I don't want to drift.  I want to be faithful, hard working, and spirit led. 

So yes, that is where I am.  Evaluating again.

(This sounds like something my sister Kristin would say, in not so many words and MUCH funnier.  "Can I say she's just a poor man's Katrina?"  No sister, you can't. But you're really funny.  No one has given me a harder time about my style, entertainment, quarks and goals than Kristin.  And no one has given me a harder time for ever changing one of those things because of harassment.  So to hear her comment on some person being a bad copy of me is funnier than you know.  I think she considers me her very own little freak... and she's not willing to put up with competitor copies.   I love my big sister, and all of HER quarks.  And I love our relationship's oddities.  She's a pretty great original.  And we're quite the pair.  Ha.)

I think my most common question for my children will be "Why?"   Why do you like that?  Why do you want that?  I can only imagine it will be hard for me to watch my children fall into trends and chase after fashions.  Unless, they can give me a good answer to Why.

If you can't answer why, I think there's a good chance you aren't doing something because it's meaningful or impacting or making you become more of who you are... but because it's popular and common.  This thought process has me wondering though:

How much do our trends say about our generation? Do they reflect a value system?  Maybe subtle, or not... I don't have an answer.  I just started processing the question.  Why are tattoos a trend?  Maybe it's just because it's cool, but maybe if we asked enough people "Why?" we might actually discover a theme of values... something our generation has ingrained in our fibre that makes us drawn to them, to their honesty, their permanency, their commitment.  Maybe? 

What other trends do we have - and do you think they suggest certain values or character traits? Good or bad. 

This made me laugh this morning...

Nicknames I have acquired across the years (in a semi-chronological order):

Kati
Kati Lady
Animal
Castor (or was I Pollux?)
Bone-Crusher Kelly
("HAMster"- though I still HATE this one dad!, And I refuse to include "TJ")
Fatty
(Big/Little) Stink
Ubibubi
"Little Sister"
Hope
Little One
Katydid
Katers
Shane
Kate
Kat
Katrina Carry Hope
Bunny
Kelly
Rina
Kati-bird

I'm trying to think if there is more...

Occasionally one will pop back into a family member's mind and we will all laugh- last week it was Kris remembering my family used to call me "Animal" when I was little... like the crazy muppet baby. It was pretty fitting. Somedays it still is. ;)