Happy Fall!
Embracing the Next Chapter of My Life
It’s been a while since I last wrote, and a lot has changed in my life since then.
Earlier this month, I moved up to the mountains, having enrolled my youngest son in the public high school up here. (It was a last minute decision to give this opportunity a go.)
Having our family split in two isn’t exactly ideal, but it’s only for nine months, my husband keeps telling me. Besides, we both agreed this development opens up a whole new set of opportunities for our kids we simply didn’t have before.
My oldest daughter is still on the homestead, developing her virtual & physical bookstores with the help of my husband. And my oldest son is with her there, primarily running our family business (with the help of my husband and daughter as well). I’m acting as their backup, filling whatever stock they need from our warehouse up here.
In time I expect the two of them to join us up here. We’ll see.
My husband is continuing to build various side industries and preparing our facilities on the homestead to accommodate our future goals. He’s doing this, of course, on top of meeting the needs of our expanding livestock (with our son’s assistance).
Getting Settled In Here
Since I’ve moved to be up here full-time, I’ve had to establish some new routines for myself. These include:
Taking care of the household here (with just the two of us in an enormous house),
Managing a new food system with a tiny kitchen,
Handling private peer-to-peer exchanges of my favorite wallpaper product of all time in addition to being our businesses’ backup,
Seeking out local learning & leisure opportunities,
Maintaining communication with my family outside this home,
Making new friends, and
Developing a new occupation for myself (now that I’m home alone for nearly 40 hours a week!).
I’ve always considered our place in the mountains to be a potential writer’s retreat for myself.
When we acquired & moved to this place back in the summer of 2019, I started publishing & distributing a weekly paper for the local community.
But that project came to an abrupt end in March of 2020 when the world all around us practically shut down. So, we all migrated back to the homestead and ended up staying down there full-time thereafter.
After the craziness of 2020 was past, I started going back and forth between our two locations with the kids — mostly in the summertime, hoping to reconnect with folks up here and tap into the local community activities & events.
In my heart I dreamed of one day writing a book, but the required attention towards my family’s needs and the constant shuffle back and forth only ever allowed me to journal and write a few letters here & there.
But now, I find myself up here more days than not, and much of my family’s needs have either diminished or are being met elsewhere.
And winter is coming. (It will be arriving much sooner up here.) And I know I’m going to have a lot of quiet in-house time on my hands.
A Golden Opportunity
While I can certainly pursue a variety of homebound hobbies and other activities, which I still intend to do to a degree, I see this time in my life as a golden opportunity to pursue my writing dreams. So, that’s what I’m going to do.
I’m presently resuming my previous practice of blogging at Messyanic.com and building up our main website, WiggleCulture.com. And I’m planning on resurrecting & reworking my memoir-writing project that I birthed twenty years ago.
Thankfully, I’m able to utilize this Substack venue to generate & manage multiple newsletters for each of those endeavors, all under the umbrella of this publication I’ve re-named CNK’s Typewriter. ← CNK stands for Carrie (not Kelly).
My aim is to generate & publish valuable (& meaningful-to-me) content and freely share it with the world. And hopefully, I will find my tribe of people who appreciate who I am and what I have to offer.
And then, in the background, I hope to begin writing the books I have bottled up inside me and perhaps even get them published and distributed into the hands of those who want to read them — sooner than later. Doesn’t that sound exciting?!
Anyway, that’s what’s happening in my world these days. :)
Staying in Touch
If you’re a subscriber to this publication, I intend to maintain regular contact with you via email (weekly, if all goes well).
In time I would like to transition into communicating offline via snail mail. But for now, it will have to be through this digital route as I continue to get myself settled into a writing (& publishing) routine.
Beyond me keeping in touch with you, I hope you will reach back to me from time to time, and we can interact with one another. That’s what I really want out of all this: to develop loving, two-way, meaningful relationships between humans — in real life.
I like to connect with other human beings at a beneath-the-surface level on matters that I think are important, and I desire people to connect with me on the other end — so we can engage with one another and hopefully enrich each other’s life.
I want this because I think that’s what we all really need to survive and thrive in life. And I’m willing to do what I can to hopefully make connections like these happen, for as many as I can reasonably reach.
So, there you have it — not just some personal news, but also some of what’s on my heart and mind — coming to you from my little writer’s retreat.
I hope you found this issue of CNK’s Typewriter informative and enjoyable. If so and you’re not already a subscriber, please subscribe to receive more issues like this in your email inbox.
And, please, feel free to share this publication with any of your trusted family and friends who you think might appreciate getting to know me and seeing the different things I have to offer.
Thank you for reading this to the end. I appreciate you!
Please write me back to at least say, “hi” and let me know you read this. (Anything more you may have to say will of course be welcomed and appreciated, too.) Thanks!
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
In the meantime, have a wonderful day! It looks to be a beautiful one here.
Take care.
Sincerely,
Carrie (not Kelly)
P.S. I’ve just updated the About page here at CNK’s Typewriter. Maybe get up and stretch your legs a bit & get a drink of your favorite beverage. And then you can come back and read what I had to say there.