Something has happened over the past few months that I’m still turning over. Maybe a breakdown. Maybe a breakthrough. Honestly, at a certain point the line between the two gets blurry. What I know is that it arrived, sat down, and changed something.
If you know me or have been reading along for a while you’ll recognize that for a few years I’ve felt the gap between how I spend time and what I actually value. Concerned about the preciousness and precariousness of time I’ve been working to close it, chipping away, making progress and losing it and starting again. Slowly and imperfectly and with a lot of circling back. But what has happened these past few months isn’t that. It isn’t progress. It’s landing. Like something I had been quietly building toward finally held my weight, and I felt it shift beneath me.
What came with it has been the unexpected part. These moments, arriving without warning in the middle of completely ordinary life, where everything goes still and I think this is it. The kids dissolving into laughter in the yard. The front door left open to whatever the afternoon is doing. The table set for a Tuesday that isn’t special except that we are all here for it. An impromptu lunch with my husband and talking about anything but the schedules and to-do lists. An afternoon in the garden and noticing what’s beginning to germinate. When presence finds me like this I know exactly what I’m holding. And I don’t take it lightly.
What surprised me most was where it was actually coming from. Not from anything I’d achieved or acquired or finally figured out. It has been in the editing and making room for new over the winter. In the tightening of the circle. In my family and the handful of friends who know me all the way down. In the work that has felt genuinely alive and the clients who make it feel that way. In the completely unexpected joy of little delights — baby chicks and tattoos (!!!) and hunting for vintage pieces online at midnight. Ya’ll, the integration I’d been looking for was never somewhere else. It was always the quieter, more specific, more particular version of the life I was already living.
So this month I wanted to do something different. I’m including the usual Bits & Bobs of what I’ve been hunting for and loving, but I also wanted to offer something more like a provocation. A set of prompts for the new season. Things I’ve been doing or thinking or feeling my way toward that have made the days richer, stranger, slower, more alive. Some practical. Some absurd. All of them genuinely meant and actively being tinkered with here at Venice.
Consider this an invitation. To mix things up, engage differently, and let spring actually change something rather than just warming the air. Take what’s useful. Leave what isn’t. But I do hope something here finds you.
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Why don’t you slow down? Monumentally, genuinely, in a way that actually changes the texture of your days. Not a quieter week. Not a lighter inbox. A real slowing. The kind that moves through you like weather and rearranges something. If you’re like me the weekends are rarely relaxing, sometimes they feel more like a juggling act, so the mornings and afternoons I’ve been able to carve out for myself have been life giving. Don’t save it for burnout. Find the time now.
Why don’t you leave your front door open this afternoon and simply stand in it? Listen. Listen to the birds. Listen to the wind. Just be ravished by it. This is it. This is the whole thing. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not paying attention.
Why don’t you set the table properly, every single night, even Tuesday, even when no one is coming and there is nothing to celebrate? Lay it as though something is about to happen, because something is. Dinner is about to happen. You’re about to sit down with loved ones. (If you don’t live with anyone invite the ones over you don’t have to perform for. Even if you do, these invitees are the best.) This is extraordinary and you should treat it accordingly. Use the good plates. Use them tonight.
Why don’t you get chickens (or something equally unexpected)? Name them silly and meaningful things. Name one after a woman who fascinates you. You will learn something about yourself and your new addition in equal measure. I promise you all will live up to it.
Why don’t you go outside without a single thing to accomplish? No deadlines lurking at the edges, no list waiting on the counter. Just go out and stand in it. Touch the dirt. Watch what is growing. Let the garden ask nothing of you for once and discover what you notice when you stop looking for what needs to be done.
Why don’t you create a home project as if it were the most important (or only) commission of your life? Think about light. Think about proportion. Consult references. Make a mood board. There is no project beneath that kind of attention, and anyone who laughs at you for it simply lacks imagination. (i.e. My Chicken Folly).
Why don’t you plant something you have absolutely no idea how to grow and then tend to it with the seriousness of someone who does? The not knowing is entirely the point.
Why don't you tell someone thank you? Not in a text, not in a comment, not in passing on your way out the door. A real thank you, looked in the eye or written in ink and sent through the mail. We are all moving too fast to do this nearly enough and every single person on the receiving end will remember it. It costs almost nothing and means almost everything. Do it this week. Do it today.
Why don’t you let your interior get a little more strange? Go collect something that feels a little risky. Art from an era you haven’t touched, a piece that contradicts everything else in the room, something with a history that hasn’t been smoothed away. Put it in the space and then step back and stop explaining yourself. The room will do the talking. It always does.
Why don’t you hang something in your home that’s been waiting patiently on the floor or in a closet? Everyone has something waiting and these things should not be kept waiting any longer.
Why don’t you buy the old thing instead of the new thing? Without exception you’ll see how quickly your entire relationship with acquiring anything changes. The permission in your true preferences just know they’re a gift.
Why don’t you spend a perfectly good evening lost on The RealReal (or eBay) with absolutely no intention of buying a single thing? Follow the thread for the pure animal pleasure of the hunt. Learn something about craft and longevity and what it means to make something intended to outlast you. This is not a waste of time. This is research into what endures.
Why don’t you wear something magnificent to do something completely ordinary? Wear it to the garden. Wear it to the hardware store. Style is wasted on occasions and should belong to something live an average Tuesday morning.
Why don’t you spend time looking at the recent Ralph Lauren collections for the actual idea underneath it? The way it holds romance and practicality in the same hand without apologizing for either. The way it understands that beauty and usefulness are not opposites. Texture and imperfection and something precious should be intertwined.
Why don’t you write down three things that happened today that were small and good? Do this every night for a week and report back. You will be astonished at the life that was already happening around you while you were busy tending to everything else.
Why don’t you pick up a book tonight? Not for self-improvement. Not to have something to say about it later. Your mind will thank you in ways it doesn’t yet have the language for.
Why don’t you put the telephone in another room for one evening a week and see what your mind does when it is left entirely to its own devices? It will be uncomfortable for approximately eleven minutes and then something genuinely interesting will happen. It always does.
Why don’t you have flowers in your room, even if they are wildflowers pulled from the yard, even if they are three stems in a water glass? A room without something living in it is only half a room and you deserve the whole thing.
Why don’t you linger after dinner? Just stay at the table. Let the candles burn down. Let the children be underfoot and loud. Let the evening be slow and unscheduled and slightly too long. These are the hours that will not announce themselves as important in the moment and will be all you think about later.
Why don’t you make something by hand this season? It could be anything at all, something that takes longer than it should and cannot be optimized or delegated or done more efficiently. Let it take as long as it takes. The slowness is the entire point and also, privately, the entire reward.
Why don’t you call someone you love in the middle of the day for absolutely no reason? Not to make plans, not to relay information, not to accomplish anything at all. Just to hear their voice and let them hear yours. It will feel indulgent and it is. That is precisely why you should do it.
Why don’t you stop waiting to feel nostalgic for this moment and simply be inside it instead? You already know this is the part that matters. Stay there. For heaven’s sake, stay there.
Best,
SK
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