Love is agreeing to a type of isolation. It is the ready willingness to defend what you know to be fact. Love—to be in a room with a view that no one else can see, to swear to the beauty of the world and beg for understanding, understanding yourself, all along, that no one can. In love, you mimic Frost, saying to all you see: “You come, too.”

That road followed the curve of the mountains, left and right, sending us out over the vast mud flats and drawing us back tightly to the mountain. Every turn felt monumental, like the whole of my previous life dropped off behind me, and the new stretch of road was all I knew or wanted.  In a very serious relationship, those turns come – sometimes at lightning speed. Perspective shifts. What becomes important is the good of two, the good of him, the good of your together future. It’s normal and healthy. I felt that shift once; I watched friends slide sparkly rings on their fingers and make that turn, too.

A steady relationship with the Lord is marked by those turns. Sometimes, in the midst of careening through an ever-changing landscape, He turns me, and the beauty of that sudden turn is seeing my future for the first time all over again. The other things—the music I was blaring, the conversation I was having, the mountains I was seeing—fade in light of the road He calls me down.

Someone has said that the more you learn to love the Lord, the more and more often you repent. And having been in love before—the kind that nearly swallows you with its glittering immensity—this makes sense to me. In love, you are hyper aware of the one you love. When he comes in a room, you feel it. When he tilts his head a certain way during conversation with someone else, you know the thoughts that prompted it. You wear prettier things. You say different things. It is your delight to bring him joy.

Too often, I miss God’s nudging for a turn because I’m busy driving. Usually full speed ahead, with music blaring and six different conversations spread out across my various networks.  But if He’s dedicated to romancing me, even in the little things — a bouquet of constellations, a tiny prayer answered — I hope my love for Him shows up in the little things, too.

So I’m looking closer at the minute trajectory of my days. My tweets. My casual conversations. My serious conversations. My thoughts. My spending. My dreaming. My either/or choices. My plans. I want them to bring Him joy.

If I’m starry-eyed lately, it’s because of Him.

I’ll make coffee, he said in answer.

She was wearing his baby blue tee shirt. Wearing it innocently (she had arrived that morning dressed too warmly for a fall that wasn’t yet fall).  Pale, bare legs. Cherry red toenails to match her fingers. A first. How do you feel about French toast, she called up to him.

The bread’s by the stove, he said.

She took a skillet out of the cabinet, set it on the stove, humming. The small joys of domesticity. Here, all the fine hairs on her forearms lay down in rest; her double time heart steadied.  In cooking, she could order the world. She could create something from nothing. She gathered eggs, a bowl, a whisk. There was no vanilla. There was no cinnamon. And the bread was white bread, stiff and somehow not quite real in its plastic wrapper.

She had never made French toast like this before.

The skillet sizzled with butter. She beat eggs and sugar to a frothy marriage.  She dipped cardboard slices of bread into the mixture, becoming alternately frustrated by its refusal to absorb and then, its instant sogginess. When she was finished, she stacked forlorn-looking slices on two mismatched plates.

Come and eat, she said, handing him a plate with an apology. They sat down together, the day before them. They talked about sports, a book they were reading. He was a little distracted.  She said his name, said it again.

Sorry, he said. What did you say?

What about tomorrow? she asked, nervous.

I don’t know, he smiled. His smile was a shrug, a leather jacket sliding down his shoulders. It depends, he finished.

The coffee was weak. She drowned the toast in syrup.

I have no explanation for you, but, Ladies and Gentleplums, I do have a few suggestions.
The weekend is upon us. My nails are freshly blue. In honor of all the good things the weekend brings to us, I’d like to offer you a Kat Recommends list (in the style of the always-spot-on McSweeney’s):

Showers in the dark
Do you guys do this already? It’s the perfect season for it. That marvelous forgetting of the world that happens when you step under the spray only intensifies if the bathroom is warm and dark.

Baked eggs (Or, ouefs en cocotte. Say it in French. Feel fancier.)
If there’s one area of grown-up life where I’m miserably failing, it’s managing to get out of bed the first time my alarm goes off.  Miraculously, I always end up waking back up in just enough time to have a cup of coffee, get ready, and concoct a (sometimes) interesting outfit—but I sacrifice my time with Jesus and my time with my journal and my time with a good breakfast. Three things that have the power to totally change the shape of my day. These little babies, however, are persuading me to get up on the first try, and they’re easy enough to make on a workday, when you’re still sleepdrunk in the pre-seven-am blackness. I promise you this: eating your breakfast from a cute little ramekin is bound to make life feel luxurious, workday or not.

The Walking Dead
Yeah, I’m behind the times. And yeah, generally I’m no fan of zombies and I find all the “zombie apocalypse” jokes terribly tired. But, this show is excellent. If you can round up a bunch of friends to start the show with, even better. And if you all happen to watch four episodes in a row, nobody’s judging.

Bralettes
A makes-me-feel-stupid-saying-it kind of name for a makes-me-feel-wonderful-wearing-it kind of thing. Don’t banish these comfy little bits of cotton and lace to weekends only. It’s thick sweater season and layers season, which means you can get away with wearing whatever you please underneath.

SelfControl
The app, not merely the discipline, although that’s always good, too. But let’s be real—when you’re facing an intimidating or otherwise unpleasant task, it’s so much easier to keep distracting yourself with the Internet. Install this, set a time limit to lock yourself out of your distractions, and watch your productivity soar.

Not going to the same place you always go.
You know it’s true. You and your friends have a spot. It’s your default, which means out of sheer inability to decide on another option, you never branch out. While there is a certain appeal to having your very own MacLaren’s, you’re probably ignoring a hundred cool spots in your city. Next weekend, try somewhere new, somewhere random. See what happens.

All Get Out
Feeling angsty?  Need something to listen to (while maintaining your quality standards, of course)? Give All Get Out’s 2011 record, The Season, a spin.

Nude + glitter nail polish.
So elegant. So subtle. And maybe a little too satisfying when you catch a glimpse of your sparkly fingernails typing away during work.

The poetry of Richard Brautigan
Visceral and startling.

Arnold Palmers
So what it’s January? A mason jar full of the signature half sweet tea, half lemonade is a guaranteed way to brighten a grey day. Gather some friends, deal some cards, and pour APs all around.

On that anxiety—the twenties are such a strange, marvelous decade. At 23, you could be married, with children. Or you could be trudging through your fifth year of college, living with your parents. Most of us are somewhere in between, but the sheer range of what we could be doing makes us question what we should be doing. If I know what my dream job is but I’m not yet pursuing it, should I feel guilty? Should I be doing whatever it takes to travel right now? In light of the Kingdom, does what I’m doing with my life really matter? How do I answer their questions when I don’t know the answer? Should I know? And, perhaps, the biggest question of all: what if I regret this?

Maybe these questions (or some version of them) bug you too. Questions for your morning commute to work, or late at night when your text message cursor blinks steadily, waiting for you to make up your mind.

In December, I let all this go. It happened unintentionally. I just stopped making plans for tomorrow because I was so overwhelmed by the joy of now. I trusted God more. I was happy shiny all month long.

This mix is about dancing. Dance with your friends, dance at your desk, dance in the shower. It’s about laughing, about energy crackling through your body, about anticipation, and mostly, about surprises. I hope you listen to it and say yes, yes, yes in 2012. Download it here.

*I’m lucky to have a passel of friends who are talented designers. Jivan Davé designed the art for this mix (thanks, Jivan!). Go look at his newest photo blog, Inner Travels.
**There is a Rihanna song on my mix. Yep. Somebody document this.

TRACK LIST:

Don’t Move // Phantogram
1966 // Moon Tides
Aminals // Baths
Niggas in Paris // Jay-Z & Kanye West
Amanaemonesia // Chairlift
Black Mags // The Cool Kids
Hello // Martin Solveig
Little Boxes // Regina Spektor
Friends Make Garbage (Good Friends Take It Out) // Low Roar
Hello Sadness // Los Campesinos!
Window Bird // Stars
Title and Registration // Death Cab for Cutie
Cassettes // Inkships
Look Around // Ponchos
Santa Fe // Beirut
Crave You (Adventure Club Dubstep Remix) // Flight Facilities
On Your Way // Alabama Shakes
Take It In // Wye Oak
Your Love (The Outfield cover) // Bon Iver
Last Night at the Jetty // Panda Bear
Year of Silence // Crystal Castles
Bad Things // Cults
A Rush and A Push and The Land Is Ours // The Smiths
Santa Maria De Feira // Devendra Banhart
We Found Love // Rihanna

It’s been raining in Greenville lately. My landscape is delicious and grey, yellow leaves plastered to pavement, small rivers running down the street. What is it in me that makes me so happy about these gloomy days?

I drove past a forgotten stone wall, green with age and moss, and thought: If I had a style blog, I’d shoot pictures here.

Of course, I don’t have a style blog. And maybe the thought dropped into mind because I successfully colorblocked today—a greater success considering that I woke up feeling quite sickish. The temptation was to throw on what I call jodhpurs (read: fancy leggings), a long sweater, and leave for work.  But taking a cue from the boys at The Midwestyle who dress better to perform better, I put on tights. A pencil skirt. Boots. A belt. Earrings. It worked. I felt a little better.

But what remained with me after I drove past the wall, and during my quiet lunch at home, and later, when I crawled into bed with hot tea, was that one immediate thought: If I had a style blog, I’d shoot pictures here.

Obviously, I found the wall beautiful—particularly where it was located, across from a little cemetery, sandwiched between two major roads. Few people come down this side street, and few people see this wall. It is lovelier in its loneliness. What does it mean, however, that I instantly processed that beauty in terms of what it could be on the internet?

The internet teaches us to live double lives. Because we share or will share so much of what we experience, we’ve trained ourselves to split our gaze, seeing everything both for what it is and what it will become. A quiet lunch at home is also an Instagram shot that will snag a couple likes. An inside joke with friends is a future hashtag. A dinner party didn’t happen if pictures weren’t taken and a blog post wasn’t written. Right?  The experience of sharing has become almost as—if not more—pleasurable than the experience itself.

Where do we draw the line?

We will never go backwards. The internet will not fade out of our lives; social networking is here to stay. We’re a generation raised in a world where content is king, and the whole of our lives—all the minute bits—is available to be packaged into that content.  And of course, there is joy in writing a thing, or tweeting a thing, or documenting your breakfast, and watching how a meaningless shot of your coffee cup, steaming in the morning, draws people to you, a small constellation of kindred interest or emotion.

But I fear that in the splitting of our gaze, we go cross-eyed, headachey. Our worlds blur, and we simply adjust. I fear that we are losing our ability to truly focus. If you are a person who spends most of your working day in front of the computer (and really, who doesn’t?), the struggle is even harder. Feeling smothered by the internet last week, I contemplated turning my phone off for the entirety of Christmas day. But the thought of what I might miss stopped me. The irony.

This is a tightrope we all walk. In three bullet points, I can’t tell you how to balance better. Even now, Tumblr is open so I can listen to music while I write, and yet a half-finished journal entry lies waiting in the moleskine next to me.

Let’s step out of our wellies sometimes and stop merely splashing through the puddles of our precious experiences. Put on our goggles. Put away our phones. And with great breaths, dive deep into nowness. Let’s swim through the warm patches and the cold spots, a spectrum of temperature change so slight only those who pay attention will notice.

And so, although my days are breathless and busy with new friends; although I swing from one late night to the next; although I click down the sidewalk in early morning, all pink-cheeked with winter and possibility, I am stilling myself long enough to talk to you about this one important thing: twinkle lights.

Most people don’t know they are magic. They drag them out of dusty attics this time every year, looping them around the tree, maybe stringing them along the roof, and they do it thoughtlessly, out of habit. I’m not trying to get weird about twinkle lights, but pause with me here. Twinkle lights (And to be clear–we’re talking about white lights. Save your multi-colored nonsense for a beach party or something) herald the approach of Christmas. Their presence announces a season of light. And most importantly, they transform whatever they touch.

How different a Christmas tree would be without lights.

As a child, I would occasionally sneak out of bed after everyone had gone to sleep, plug in the Christmas tree, and slide my body partially under the branches, looking up. Without my glasses, the view was a swimmy bokeh of lights, a tiny moment of sheer magic, all to myself during Christmas. It’s memories like that one, or the way a strand of lights wraps life around a broken branch, that makes me stop.

And, after all, isn’t that what the best things in life do? A perfect song, a kiss, laughter that makes our stomachs ache. They interrupt our everyday parade with a whirl of color and sound. They gently turn our faces to look. They hand us the present like a gift.

Twinkle lights – on a tree, over a bed, in a tangle at my feet – remind me to look twice at my life. To celebrate the ordinary, to see the quotidian for the startling beauty it sometimes is. I came home on my lunch break a couple days ago to tackle a ridiculously tall sinkful of dishes. Those forty-five minutes of work were lovely, because those dirty dishes were dinner parties and stories, laughter and a little wine, a physical representation of how much my life has expanded since moving here.

It’s Christmas Adam, and honestly, I can barely concentrate on anything for longer than thirty minutes, my attention span a hummingbird. Everything is blooming right now, and at night, by the light of a glowy Christmas tree and a glowy mantel, I’m remembering just how beautiful life really is. How beautiful God makes it.

I hope tonight and tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, you remember, too.

My year starts over twice. First in January, then in October.

October arrives with urgency. The weather, of course, is perfect and fleeting, skies bluer in October than any other month. The year is upon me, and suddenly I realize I’m closer to a new January than I am the old. All the things I hoped to accomplish — have I done them? What have I grown out of, into?

Fall is the time of year for reinventing. And that seems fitting as I pull the next season of my life over my head, thinking about the other lives I ran my hands over and left swaying slightly on the rack. What they don’t tell you about being grown-up is just how free you are to decide what that means. After marriage and babies, that freedom narrows a bit, but for now — I could live on a quiet farm in New Hampshire, with wellies and blackberry tarts and chickens, and I could be content, so long as I had a little time to write. Sometimes I do want to live on a farm in New Hampshire. Or an old house with a wrap-around porch in a mountain college town. Or, more often, a city with deadlines and dinner parties that makes me hum with ideas.

I could live any of these lives. I could write a book. I could open the granola cafe we talked about in college. (I could not teach. That is one life I could not live.) It’s sort of baffling to me that we choose one life, and live that one. There are so many Kathryns I could happily be. But what I know for sure, here in my dizzy twenties, is that a long time ago, I gave the shepherding of my life to Jesus, and so, wherever this life goes, I trust Him to take me there. That doesn’t stop me from dreaming about what’s next.

This mix was made for change, for the mood swings of transition, and for dreaming about all the lives we might lead. Download it here.

TRACK LIST:

St. Joseph’s // The Avett Brothers
Favorite Cities // Azure Ray
Bambi // Tokyo Police Club
Lose It // Austra
I Could Be There for You // Eisley
Swim Until You Can’t See Land // Frightened Rabbit
Lights Out, Words Gone // Bombay Bicycle Club
Little Baby Sister // Kopecky Family Band
Never Going Back // Fleetwood Mac
Vacation Vacation // U.S. Royalty
L.E.S. // Childish Gambino
Nothing Familiar // Psychic Babble
Shake It Out (The Weeknd remix) // Florence + The Machine
The Circle Married the Line // Feist
Casimir Pulask Day // Sufjan Stevens
Lonely Boy // The Black Keys
Love Will Save Your Soul // Grouplove
Be My Baby // Kids
Tell Her No // Tennis
Twenty Miles to N.H. // The National
Bruce // North Highlands
Bedroom Eyes // Dum Dum Girls
She Likes Hair Bands // Butch Walker

I’m pretty sure this won’t be my last move. There’s too much world (city) to see.

However, I’m glad, for now, that another move isn’t yet on my horizon because packing does not get more fun with practice. I promise. But since I’m such a pro, I thought I’d give you my best advice for moving. Because we’re twenty-somethings, and we move a lot. We don’t seem to need roots like our parents did, and I wonder if that’s just because we think we can carry our roots with us, via iPhone and Facebook and Skype.

Kat’s Pro Advice for Moving:

Befriend a strong boy because the heaviest part of your move won’t be your furniture or your kitchen stuff, but rather, your books. Your glorious boxes and boxes of books.

Be really dramatic. You’re moving! Your whole life is changing! You’re totally allowed to wander around your apartment in undies, dinosaur socks, and a scarf on your head complaining to yourself about how much you have to do.

Listen to Couer de Pirate when you’re packing up your bookshelf and your desk, because suddenly, you’ll find yourself lost in old letters or last year’s journal, and lilting French music will feel just right when the nostalgia haze clears.

Listen to Childish Gambino when you’re ready to get it done. While you’re busy being so charming and productive, take full advantage of your last days living alone: dance like a fool.

Open a bottle of wine. Red, please, it pairs nicely with packing paper and November.

Give up. If you just don’t feel like packing, well, don’t. (Unless the moving truck is coming in an hour or something.) Sometimes the most productive thing you can do for yourself is to climb under your quilts with Netflix and say “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

Ok, kids. That’s it. Almost. I have one last thing to tell you. Soon, very soon, I’m starting a short blog adventure. You’ll still see the same sporadic posts as always, but between them (and a little less sporadic), I’m going to do 30 Things I’ve Never Done Before (see, I capitalized all the words! It really is important!) and write about them. I’m doing this little adventure with Cathy Monetti, my boss, kindred spirit, writer, and expert at her own 30 day projects.

There’s something kind of interesting about starting this project with her just as I move on to a new job in a new town — the physical distance, as well as the years between us, create a gap between our two experiences, but we’ve both decided to welcome thirty brand new shiny things into our life. And that brings our experiences right back together. In the meantime, I need you. Please comment and give me any and all suggestions for my 30 days. Big things. Tiny things. Obviously, I have my own list, but I wanna see your ideas.

Three years is a lot of time, or a little. That this one song — like a handful of others before it —  has traveled the years with me without growing stale makes me wonder about the things we choose to keep. We’re always moving, changing, losing. The things that once defined us cease to, and when does that moment occur? Is it instant and exact, lightning to the earth, or a slow drifting?

I’m a pretty different girl from 2008 Kat, obviously. During three years of moving, changing, losing, I’ve dropped songs, styles, ideas, habits, beliefs. But somewhere — maybe every time I chose to listen — I decided to keep Blood Bank. And maybe it’s in this eternal choosing and transporting that we refine just exactly who we are.

– 2008 –

My roommate went to bed early. On the other side of the room, under quilts and soft lamp-glow, I was pretending to write a paper about Emily Dickinson. Pretending because my thoughts were only half-pinned to the woman in white; rather, I was dreamy, blissed out over the unexpected loveliness of the new year.  So when he texted to say “Have you seen the moon? I’ll come get you,” I rolled out of my bed with a quiet thump, tiptoed down the hallway, and stood shivering on the back porch waiting for his car to pull up.

Why are you barefoot, silly girl? he asked. It’s February.  And it was a cold February, especially on that night, the sky a rare navy, as it occasionally is. We’re just going for a drive, right? I replied. The heat in his car was heavy on my bare legs; he dropped his hand on my knee and gave it the tiniest squeeze. He drove fast down South Carolina back roads, blaring Blood Bank, a white rosary swinging from his rearview window. He wasn’t Catholic. Who can explain the dark mysteries of back roads after midnight? On them, you can be anyone you want to be.

Bon Iver was new to the world then, and so were we. I marveled at him, at being two.

– 2011–

This was not the first time I’d heard my friend sing, but it was the first time it felt like a concert. I sat with my back to the wall, looking up, and he sat cross-legged on the bed. There was lamplight, and it was late. When you’re young, the irresistible thing about about being grown up is the freedom to do whatever you want. When you’re grown up, the irresistible thing about being young is the impermanence of your decisions. Doing what you want is just as thrilling as you thought it’d be, but it can be costly. It was late, and I had an hour’s drive home and work in the morning. But I wanted to stay — just a little longer — so I did. Time determines the dividends.

He started playing Blood Bank, hunching over his guitar the way tall people do. It’s not everyone who can successfully sing Justin Vernon, who can reach. But he did, with his eyes closed and his face twisted with all the song’s emotion. And in watching him sing it, I heard it like I hadn’t heard before. Blood Bank is a story that builds, lyrically and musically. The steady beat, the swelling guitars. It’s a journey, and the thing about journeys is that you end somewhere totally different from where you began.

I drove back that night quiet and wide-eyed at my future, Ira Glass talking me all the way home.

Today I did one. Today I let go.

When I woke up, I had no plans to inflate giant balloons. Instead, I turned my alarm off for just a little bit more sleep, like I do every morning. I made coffee and toast, like I do every morning. I listened to Bon Iver and sat cross-legged on my bathroom counter to put on mascara and left for work in a rush — like I do every single morning. The only thing different about today is that I left the office at lunch, and started a brand new year.

Somewhere between a conference call and lunch, I remembered the two giant red balloons folded up in my desk drawer, bought for another life. So this is what I did today after I left the courthouse. It was an impulsive decision, like my best usually are. And even though this little video (shot without my knowledge) isn’t perfect, letting those balloons go this afternoon was.

I got this text today.

Amen. Happy times.