Whereas Wit & Delight has been quieter for a yr now, I’ve been writing greater than ever. As I’ve slowed down my publishing cadence, my curiosity about the best way we dwell—and why—has ripened. I’m fascinated by what sits beneath the veneer of aesthetics—how we beautify our areas, who we let in, and who we maintain out. Most significantly, I’ve reconnected with what it means to thrill in our personal way of life.
The act of writing about these experiences has been deeply transformative for me. It’s introduced up conversations with readers I might have by no means had in short-form, visual-based content material. That is what I like most about Substack.
Whereas I proceed to share life-style content material and the occasional private essay right here on Wit & Delight, I additionally publish weekly on Home Name, a Substack e-newsletter during which I discover why our properties—and the lives we lead inside their partitions—matter a lot. For brand new or longtime readers who haven’t discovered their method to Home Name fairly but, I encourage you to peruse this physique of labor.
Beneath is an unique excerpt from a current Home Name essay, “In Favor of a Quiet Residence Life.” Choosing a quieter life within the face of an more and more noisy world felt like profession demise for my life-style model—however one I desperately wanted for myself. I wrote about making room for vacancy, having fun with easy pleasures, and delighting in quiet moments at residence. I hope you benefit from the essay and be a part of me over on Substack.
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Home Name Excerpt: In Favor of a Quiet Residence Life
Amid the repetitive rhythm of every day life, one in every of my favourite indulgences is the act of daydreaming. Ever since I used to be a baby, I’ve discovered myself wandering freely via the realms of creativeness. What began with a unconscious want to appease myself, at its finest, has confirmed fertile floor for a wealthy interior life. The mundane turns into magical, and the odd is reworked into the extraordinary. My daydreaming has given method to lucid dreaming and generally these photographs are so vivid, actuality pales as compared.
Once I gained the nickname “Spacey Katie” for wandering in my thoughts throughout tutorial classes, dance lessons, and softball video games, I discovered my tendency to take away myself from the right here and now wasn’t precisely serving to me navigate social settings. Like most introverts, I noticed my pure state as “much less” than—one thing to “repair” to excel on this world.
However these days, I’ve discovered myself making extra room for introversion. This winter was deafeningly quiet in all areas of my life, a kind of magic darkish that felt intentional. Like area had been made to come back residence to this a part of myself. I didn’t have my regular escapes: my creativity felt stunted, schedules have been bare-bones, and indulging in alcohol and meals simply made me really feel worse. My instinct was telling me to take the quiet and simply be with the vacancy. I quickly got here to appreciate this vacancy was life-giving.
How Delight and Residence Life Intersect
As I regularly opened as much as this name towards introversion, I saved coming again to how delight and a quiet residence life intersect. It was the place I had given myself time to study to be OK with issues as they have been, to rehabilitate my petulance for extra, extra, extra.
These little duties—these ignored, underrated, easy pleasures (heat toast with tea in a sunsoaked chair for instance)—have been doing extra for my temper and sense of well-being at residence than churning away at venture after venture. I began questioning whether it is even attainable to take pleasure in our properties if we don’t know easy methods to discover pleasure in simply being. All of the paint colours, wallpapers, and patterns can’t be translated into an interior sense of permission to sink into your self via the pleasure of merely being residence.
This delight I’ve been chasing since 2009 was by no means going to disclose itself via self-improvement or cookie-cutter recommendation from {a magazine} on easy methods to beautify my home. In actual fact, I don’t assume there’s a guide in any respect. When designing a life well-lived, one needs to be courageous sufficient to let go of the personas, masks, and armor they’ve gathered. Maybe releasing what isn’t ours and letting issues die that weren’t meant for us is the one method to design a life that seems like residence. Sadly, this course of isn’t a path lined with candy-colored daisies however one which extra so resembles a stroll via Loss of life Valley.
I began questioning whether it is even attainable to take pleasure in our properties if we don’t know easy methods to discover pleasure in simply being. All of the paint colours, wallpapers, and patterns can’t be translated into an interior sense of permission to sink into your self via the pleasure of merely being residence.
This week on Home Name, I wish to contact on the facility of our properties past the best way they appear. The inspiration for this put up got here from years of engaged on my residence however not essentially feeling good within the areas I used to be creating. Once I requested myself what makes me really feel most content material and delighted at residence, what revealed itself stunned me.
What a Quiet Residence Life Represents for Me
Areas that stay fixed.
It’s essential to have locations in my residence I’m not actively updating—rooms I merely let be. It’s a apply that brings me each consolation and a way of peace. These areas, which embody my bed room, kitchen, and workplace, have developed to replicate my altering wants and preferences. Whereas I nonetheless make occasional changes, I’ve determined to deliberately chorus from making vital adjustments to those rooms except there’s a clear want for an replace. . . .
These areas have change into extra than simply rooms in my residence. They’ve change into extensions of myself, reflecting my character, values, and aspirations. By permitting them to be, I enable myself to understand the wonder and luxury of the current second with out the fixed want for change.
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Kate is the founding father of Wit & Delight. She is at the moment studying easy methods to play tennis and is perpetually testing the boundaries of her inventive muscle. Observe her on Instagram at @witanddelight_.
