My Dear Friends,
It’s been a while and I’ve been very quiet on the blog since the end of 2025 because 2026 has been a helluva year and there were times that I wasn’t sure if I’d get back to blogging. The company I work for restructured at the end of last year, drastically shaking up my day-to-day and still has me questioning, “WTF am I doing with my life?”. We learned in January that our sweet dog had 2 different types of cancer, which we eventually lost him to this summer. I unexpectedly had a minor medical procedure to remove the screws that were put in my foot back in November. We moved to a new place over the summer in 90°F heat between work and personal travel, which was very challenging figuring out routines, especially since the move had not been planned. It was a very lucky find on Zillow and it ultimately made the chaos more chaotic, which I didn’t realize was possible until this summer.
Any of those things alone is a life change that takes time to process, but all of it happening within a few weeks and months of each other felt like swimming in the ocean during a storm when the waves are huge but you can’t tell how big they are until they’re crashing over you. You can’t catch a full breath before you’re hit by the next wave, you’ve been swimming for what feels like hours while your eyes start to burn from the salt water, and you just want to go home. Except that’s changed too and you’re starting to think that you don’t how you’re going to make it through another minute of this. Then suddenly it’s calmer because the storm is over, and you realize that the waves are just ripples in the water now. You can see the shore again, so you start paddling towards it but your body and mind are exhausted so it takes longer than you’d like to get there, but you make it. Now you look around and have to figure out what you’re going to do next.
That’s where I am right now. Back on shore, processing what’s happened this year, and resting while I figure out what’s next for me and for Katie Roaming.
I had hoped to be more organized with with weekly blog posts, new experiences to share from previous and current travels, and fresh ideas inspired by the world around me but after many long, draining days, storytelling was the last thing on my mind. I have stories from trips I took two years ago that I haven’t shared yet because it was deprioritized before my surgery last November and I never got around to putting words on the page. Let’s not forget the grief of all the changes this year, which, candidly, has been the hardest part to navigate. There were days when I logged off my work computer and stared at the wall until I remembered to feed myself before going to bed and doing it all over again. There has simply been no room to reminisce or share my experiences because the current reality has been draining too much of my energy, which is a bummer after putting so much work into launching this blog.
There’s a book by Katherine May called Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, which I read in January. I liked the premise of pausing to care for ourselves during challenging times, and that was the extent I thought about it as I put the finished book on my shelf and moved on. However, now, that I’ve lived through the last year, I feel like I was plunged into a season of wintering without realizing it. I’m still in it, if I’m honest, just more aware of the need to take care of myself so I can be me again. So far, I know that I won’t be swimming in frigid waters or taking a trip to Iceland to withdraw from life like May does in the book, but I do want to make it a point to assess what I value most and determine if the frameworks I’ve set up in my life allow me to say yes to them. I also want to take time to notice things I would normally breeze past like looking up on a clear night to see the stars, or actually tasting my breakfast instead of shoving it in my face while I read work emails before my first meeting. Slow and intentional is how I hope to spend the rest of this year as I work my way back to myself.
All this to say, it’s been a wildly different year than I expected. Katie Roaming is still here; just a little quieter than I had hoped for during its first year.
My dear friends, if you’re still here after I’ve navigated 365 days of sheer chaos, please know how much I appreciate you. This was not a season of life I had expected, nor is it one that I hope to repeat for a very long time. I am immensely grateful that you’re here, and I can’t wait to share all of the in-between that happened plus the new experiences I’ll be having in the coming months and years.
Giving you a big virtual hug and gratitude from the bottom of my heart.
Thank you for being here 💜