Coming Back Into Focus

As I sit here, I’m torn at where to dig in – do I first tell you about my most exciting news regarding my engagement or do I go heavier, sharing more about why the hiatus?…let’s go heavy first, wanna rip the band-aid off now.

MIM was my pride and joy from 2016 to 2020. It was one of the BEST investments I made on myself – I was able to document my mid and late twenties in New York City, it helped me share and feel connected ot friends and family from all over, and overall, this blog made me a hungrier, more productive person. I looked forward to coffee and writing sessions until I didn’t anymore.

What happened? I can think of 3 factors that heavily impacted my relationship with the blog:

Extreme burnout of writing
Feeling undeserving of sharing
Needing a change in creative expression

Some of you know that I had to quit my favorite job ever in New York City to move to Denver. In NYC, I was an education program manager who traveled all over the city 3-4 days a week collaborating and supporting entrepreneurship teachers in all 5 boroughs (plus upstate AND Jersey). It was the most dynamic role I’ve held, and I still miss that job and organization to this day. Once Cesar and I were living in Denver, I had a hard time finding a good-paying job in program management, so I decided to try something a little different within the education nonprofit world – a comms and marketing manager role. Long story short, in that role I built up the burnout of writing and desperately missed a people-facing role. Of course, at the time I didn’t realize how much this experience was impacting my energy and zest for life, but now, looking back the writing is all over the wall. I was not enthused, mostly uninspired.

The second factor that also affected my desire to write was this intense feeling of being undeserving of taking up space and sharing about my life on the internet. We all know that 2020 was a year of hell for soo many reasons, one of the heaviest, troubled years of my existence. I am a white, able-bodied, privileged person. With the heightened political atmosphere, the passionate Black Lives Matter protests, a global pandemic, the world literally catching fire like never before…fuck. I felt like I had to step away from that negative feeling of being undeserving to talk about the *normal* topics I usually write about on here.

So…I decided I needed to change my form of creative expression for the time being. And that’s what I did. Instead of sharing a lot about my life, I actually created a small business, A La Carte Vintage. Truly, I threw myself into sourcing a variety of vintage and second-hand goods to help people find both statement pieces to kickstart the designs of spaces in their homes and also finishing touches to help them tie an aesthetic together, and y’all – it was the perfect thing for me to do: 1) I did it alone and felt safe doing it during pre-vaccine COVID, 2) I met some of the nicest, supportive people online via my shop’s IG, and 3) I began making a considerable amount of supplemental income, which was perfect timing because I started having additional unforeseen financial expenses last year that I was able to not sweat about because of my supplemental income.

The thing is, running a small business like mine is not passive at all – it’s quite labor-intensive: I’m the sourcer, stylist, photographer, content creator, accountant, shipper, customer service agent – everything all in one gal who happens to work a normal 9 to 5 job, too. So, that’s what I’ve been spending most of my spare time outside of professional work doing these days. Like how this blog was one of the greatest decisions I made as an adult, I know ALCV is, too.

Over the past 6 months or so, I’ve thought about a few topics to write about, but I still couldn’t get myself to sit down and do it. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t make myself do it just because – I gave myself some grace to be distant.

But today was different. Today I thought to myself, “It’s time.” And it did feel right. So here I am.

Here’s the happier news: this past weekend Cesar and I got engaged! He is so sweet and thought of so many little details (like he usually does) – I was so giddy. I bet you’re wondering how it happened, eh?

We left our house to get to the Roosevelt National Forest’s Lost Lake trailhead by 9AM. The trail is 4 miles roundtrip and took us about 2 hours to get to the lake. The scenery is STUNNING – we had perfect blue skies with just a few small clouds in sight. Cesar set up our tripod and said he wanted to get pictures (he usually hates pictures, but he mentioned that he wanted a new profile pic since the one he had was 2+ years old haha). Then he mentioned that he had gotten Bella another cute piece of clothing that he wanted me to see and told me to close my eyes because he wanted to surprise me. That’s when I knew. 🙂 He proceeded to tell me to open my eyes, I did, and then I called Bella over, and she ran past me! I had to turn and try to read the bandana, and once I oriented her, I read, “Will you marry my dad?” on it. And then I started to laugh, and I turned around and there Cesar was – kneeling in front of me with a big smile on his face, and he asked me if I’d marry him. At that point, I was ecstatic and said, “Hell yes!”