A Day In the Life

welcome to my brain in the morning

This will be the first non-fiction Substack I send out that is behind a paywall. I will continue to write and share things for free, but if you are enjoying your time here it would mean so much to me if you considered supporting my writing. I know there are seasons for all things, and maybe this isn’t your season to be a paid subscriber. But if you’re having fun here, and you can, I would love to be able to carve out more time to write things for all of you. Going paid helps me do that. Okay that is all!

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Last year I didn’t decorate for Christmas.

There were loads of reasons for it, the chief of which was that we were spending Christmas in Northern Ireland and would be there for five weeks. I knew if I came back to a house all decked out on January 8th, I’d have a panic attack. I always start the new year with a clean slate— which for me means not a shred of Christmas in sight on the first of the year.

Anyway, this year I’m decorating.

I wake up these November mornings and go downstairs to get my coffee. We just got a new coffeemaker that you can set a brew timer on, and it’s really changed my life. Like waking up to a love letter from your past self.

I read and drink my coffee. The only perk of having my husband travel so much for work is that I can flip on the lamp and bring my coffee back into the warm bed to read for an hour before the school run. When he’s home, I tend to do my morning reading in the living room, which is decidedly less cozy.

I’m in between books right now, so instead I’ve been sitting on my couch looking at my living room and scheming about how I can do the most decorating for Christmas with the least amount of money. For all my maximalist tendencies, I don’t have a ton of holiday decor. Maybe three small cardboard boxes shoved in the back of the coat closet that include everything? Fairy lights and all.