Thirty-three: becoming weirder, centering writing, and using the good candles

Hello dear readers,

It’s Sunday, January 18th, 2026. Sun streams in through the window and, over top the lace half curtains in the kitchen, all I see are pine trees and blue sky, and just the tip of the green lamp post in front of our home. There is a mug of breakfast tea, brought over from England by a family friend last June, with lavender cream in it. Franklin sleeps on a bed I knit for them (which lives at the edge of the large table permanently now, it seems) and Theodore, not far off, sleeps in a sun beam on the back of the couch.

My birthday is tomorrow, and while I’ve never been one to make a fuss over it—really, what I’d love more than anything is to disappear into the woods or to sit by the sea through it—I am the kind of person who enjoys documenting life in all its forms. And while I hadn’t intended on writing a birthday blog post, my desire for archival practices, for capturing snapshots of life at different points, is too great. I want to create something I can look back on through the years, a logbook that follows me to old age, and so it seems the birthday blog post is happening.

This year especially, I feel hopeful. When I turned thirty a few years ago, I felt something shift inside me, though now that I’m typing this, “shift” feels too modest to describe the change. It was as though the first 29 years of life—all the things I struggled with, and worried about, and raged against—quietly melted into the background. And every year since (thirty-one, thirty-two), more challenges fell away. Tomorrow, I’ll be thirty-three, and I feel the most me I have in a long time.

I saw a post recently that said, in your thirties, you become the kind of person you were when you were twelve, only without the self-doubt, body problems, anxiety, etc. I’m happy to report that this seems to be the case—I no longer try to hide the things that make me “weird,” and I do things that I enjoy doing without thinking about how other people consider me. So, here’s to getting weirder and even more myself in the coming year!

Now, what I’d like to do is create a small way of detailing where I’m at right now, something I can check back on in the coming years to see how I’ve changed (or haven’t). And so, now I present to you:

At Thirty-three

Writing the first draft of a novel that feels like the truest thing I’ve ever written—feeling so settled that this is how I want to write
Putting the final touches on a manuscript I finished in autumn, and sending it out to agents
Dreaming of what will go in the garden this spring: wheat, blue poppies, radishes, zinnias, black roses, scarlet runner beans, sweet carrots.. you get the picture
Cleaning out my closet and finally getting rid of jeans that no longer fit, as well as pulling any dresses I bought because they were pretty, but will never actually wear
Drinking far too much coffee for one person but enjoying every minute
After a lot of thinking, deciding to go back to teaching, albeit in a reduced capacity (and with an entirely different mindset toward work in all its forms)
Spending a lot less time on my phone than I did in past years; not wanting to be on social media (but seeing why I’ll need it, given what I do)
Tackling half-finished sewing projects that have been collecting dust in my closet
Working on one knitting project at a time (not three, or four, or more)
Thinking of being brave and signing up for a week-long writer’s conference in a town not far south from where I live. It’s a bit expensive, but I’ve wanted to go to one for years and never made it happen. (Note to self: check in on this next year!)
Using up the fruit in the freezer. I froze way too much over the summer and am now dealing with a pile of plums, peaches, nectarines.. a good many fruit-laden spice cakes seem to be on the horizon
Living smaller than I have been, but not in a bad way—reducing the amount of things I try to get done, and not starting something on a whim when I know I won’t finish it
Using the good china, burning the good candles, drinking the good coffee and tea

Now that I’ve written all this, I’m glad I decided to go ahead with this plan. This is the kind of archive I’ll look back on twenty years down the line to admire just how much I’ve grown. And besides, I need to get better at celebrating myself (birthday and otherwise) and this feels like a small step toward doing that.

I hope you’re all doing well, and wishing you a wonderful week ahead.

—Catherine

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, you may also be interested in my other online archival endeavors:

—instagram

—substack

—youtube

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