Loneliness, a book rec, and plants 🪴
Hey friend - missed you last week! Let's chat about the fact that finding new people as adults is hard.
Life stuff (that you just can’t make up)
Have you ever felt lonely when you are very obviously not alone? I'm guessing that if you're hanging with me on (most) Fridays, that the answer is yes - since the whole intent of Coffee& is to share more so we all know we are in this life thing together 👯♀️
I’ll start with this: Colorado is amazing. There's so much beauty to explore outdoors and I'm not melting in July 🏔️ I have my spouse, toddler, and puppy here with me and I genuinely love spending time with them. My new colleagues are great and I can tell that I'm going to enjoy this job once classes start. We even just hosted our first visitors and had a great time exploring more of Colorado Springs with them. Yet amidst all of this, I have been feeling homesick and admittedly a bit lonely.
I obviously miss the beach and scooting and skateboarding on flat land at sea level 😅 but what really hits hard is how much I miss our toddler dancing to the music at our church in FL and the impact our worship leaders had on our kiddo's love for music. I miss meeting up with friends at playgrounds and arcades and food and letting our toddlers run wild together (or watching our adult friends run wild with our toddler 🤣). I miss knowing our neighbors and knowing that when our toddler would walk into their condos like he owned their places, that he felt loved and wanted by others. I miss the ease of spending time with our families. I miss my FL coworkers. I miss our people.
Finding new people as adults is hard and trust me, we are trying! It just takes time to find that right combo of adults and kiddos and interests and schedules. I'm thankful that you're all here virtually and that we can be vulnerable enough to share these things with one another. Thank you for this space and for helping me to know that although I may sometimes feel alone, that I'm not. And ps - neither are you 💞
Recent binge-listens
Young Jane Young. I can’t get this book out of my head and I think it’s because I thought it ended about two chapters too soon. It’s about a sex (read: sexist) scandal and its life-long impact on the then twenty-year-old woman who slept with her congressman boss. Oh and shocker - zero impact to the congressman. YEP. Read it.
Things bringing me joy
My “little fiddle”. I handed off most of my plants to friends in the Destin area before we made the move to CO, but I did sneak a tote bag of plants to our new home. My tiny fiddle plant was looking ROUGH before we even left, but I really felt like she could do it. She now has her first leaves in literally two months and I'm just really proud of her (and quite frankly of myself) for not giving up. Get you some plants - they are a testament to resilience and they just make life better 🌱
