ISSUE #115 Spring back as a college senior. That sentence alone may trigger memories of long nights and rough mornings, the smell of UV Blue and Coconut Rum. Unless you are a painting major, in which case Spring Break smelled like - paint. As part of my uber-classical fine arts training, we were often assigned to copy works from the past as homework. So a couple of weeks before spring break - my figure painting professor assigned me my spring break project - to reproduce a painting from one...
9 days ago • 4 min read
ISSUE #114 The crap gap. It’s what I think of as the middle of the climb, and it's a moment I tend to forget about very conveniently every time I plan a new hike. It’s the moment when the initial excitement of the hike has worn off, and with each grueling uphill step, I think to myself, “What the hell were you thinking?” and dare not complain because—this was my idea, after all. And I’ve never experienced a “crap gap” quite as ruthlessly as I did back in June. The moment when something you...
16 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE #113 Where do I even start with this story? It’s one that I’m pretty sure Kyle will be telling around campfires until the day he dies. Kyle told me the night before that he bought us tickets at the last minute & had to reschedule meetings to make it work. With John Cougar Mellencamp, Yelling at my boyfriend in the middle of the concert. Or how I knew as soon as I saw the tickets that they were real, even though everyone else was still questioning them. I guess i should go back to the...
23 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE #112 Buzzed on my first pumpkin spice latte of the season, I arranged my treasures on the linoleum bookstore table: A collection of neon highlighters Color-coordinated pens A ruler A stack of 6 syllabi And most importantly - a new planner for the school year This was my favorite part of a new semester. I started by creating a (color-coded, obviously) weekly view of my class schedule. Using graph paper, I blocked out time by the hour—carefully dividing it into 7 columns and labeling each...
30 days ago • 5 min read
ISSUE #111 There's nothing quite like staring at a giant hole where your living room floor used to be. 😱 The endless hours I've spent watching HGTV taught me by the time I was 12 that foundational and structural issues equal a BIG problem for your house. House Hunters, Flip or Flop, Chip & Joanna are also to blame for the manifestation of my current life—renovating a "worst house on the block" fixer upper that doesn't even have good bones. Which brings us to this moment. See, when we first...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
ISSUE #110 A year ago today, our house was still pretty bare-bones. The walls had no insulation, the old windows were still in place, and we were down to the studs. I'm not even sure if the electrical was done. We were still months away from installing drywall. You know what's funny? I probably wouldn't remember half of these details if I didn't have progress pics. I like to think of them as my “mental health support pics.” I took the first photo of our house on January 2nd, 2022. Catie of...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
ISSUE #109 Another perfect summer night for a concert In the park. I dangled my hand out the window as we drove down the car-lined road until the music's murmur was lost down the hill behind us. “We missed another one,” Kyle said. It was almost comical at this point Reader. It's been two summers since we moved to the small town we now call home (crazy). Two summers of seeing the banner for the summer concert series in the park, taking a picture of it so we wouldn’t forget. And even getting...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
ISSUE #108 Picture this Reader. A bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, overly caffeinated Catie, five years ago, scribbling away the following words in her 12-week-year journal. “In five years, I’ll be 30 years old,” followed by a laundry list of dreams that would make even the most ambitious go-getter raise an eyebrow. For context, the 12-Week Year is a productivity/planning workbook that I found when I was brand-new to the personal development scene but still love today. The principles in the 12-Week...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
ISSUE #107 I peered over the dash and looked down the steep and rocky hill. I knew we shouldn’t have taken this way. There was no way we could get down there, right? White knuckling the oh shit handle, I held my breath as Kyle slowly let off the gas, and we started to wobble down the road (if you could call it that), turning the wheel left & then right to avoid the larger stones & potholes. And then - as we reached the bottom, I saw it. Water. The road was washed out. Could we even get back...
2 months ago • 5 min read