Welcome! I ask that you bear with me as I develop my writing cadence and the focus of this blog. The canvas is blank, it’s been a while since I wrote for an audience, and I have so many ideas on how this could unfold. I’m excited to see how this develops, hear from you all about what resonates, and learn exactly how my voice fits into this void of knowledge and chatter that we call the internet. Until then, I am focused on doing – not perfecting.  

The intentionality of spontaneity.

The past five months have been incredibly busy – I’ve traveled for work and for pleasure, I’ve started a new position within my company, and I’ve dove headfirst into recentering my time around my personal goals. I’m feeling more confident in the life that I lead and have wanted to explore more from this life than what has been a monotonous entanglement with a 9-5 job mixed with the occasional hobby. All good things have been about, but new desires and realizations have required me to step back from the activities that I have normally centered my time around. In making way for something new, I’ve had to abandon the “old”. 

New endeavors left little time for me to really engage in the social activities I previously pursued, and I realized in mid March that I had really begun to isolate myself from my social circle. This unintended social hibernation made me wonder how I could begin to reconnect with my community, and I set out to find out ways to re-engage in ways that felt authentic and doable. 

I decided that the easiest and quickest way that I could do this was to host a dinner party. I picked the guest list (no easy task), found a date that worked for everyone (no easy task) and got to work cleaning up the backyard (no easy task), curating a playlist (easy task), and choosing a menu (easy task). What felt most natural to me was a girls night where I could clue my girlfriends in to what I had been up to and hear from them in an environment that was welcoming, lent itself to curiosity, and acceptance of the changes we were all working on for ourselves. 

I wanted to create a space where my friends did not have to lift a finger and they felt relaxed enough to open up and truly catch up. After several “Are you sure you don’t need us to bring anything?” texts, not a single person showed up empty handed, bringing with them the requested wine or beverage, some additional food that was not allowed to be prepared (I had a vision) and tulips of different shades of pink. 

The night went off without a hitch, and left me feeling more connected than a check in would. Before my guests left, one had made the comment that organizing a night and dinner like this would stress her out, but she loves to cook and if any one of us messaged her asking for dinner she would easily make it that night. The response was murmurs of how we would never text her requesting a last minute dinner, even if we did want to try her cooking. The interaction left me wondering – how can I do better at showing my love in ways that makes sense for my community and how can I better accept love from others when it is not packaged in a way that makes sense to me? 

As someone who lives alone and is far away from my family, I am always looking for easier ways to socialize, to connect with others, and to show my appreciation in simple ways that do not always involve a text message or social media. For much of last year, figuring out how to connect or reconnect with others was just hard for some reason. I think that it is easy to feel like the ways that society encourages us to interact can feel robotic and empty, and void of the real human connection that I have been craving recently and this year I am on a path to be more intentional about how I spend my time.

As I continue to ponder this question, I am sure that I will be pushed out of my comfort zone with the answers that come time, but this moment was an important marker for me.  Moments where we realize that sometimes it’s okay to show up for friends in ways that are not necessarily convenient or expected – to buy “friend flowers” for others, to allow others show up to my house for a conversation on short notice, or to request a last minute meal from a friend just because you’re curious about the mouth-watering dishes they post on their stories. These unexpected moments can lead to unexpected conversations and unexpected outcomes. These unexpected moments break up the monotony. 

And I think that is the point of this post – or one of the points, is to allow yourself to lean into ideas, opportunities, and experiences that may not make sense. I do not normally host curated dinner parties, but this felt right. I do not normally think of buying friends flowers, but receiving them was so meaningful. I may not normally request dinner from a friend…. But maybe I should. For me, the idea of “intentional living” has been presented as lacking spontaneity, but maybe this intentional boundary pushing is actually the way to create spontaneity for myself. I want to encourage my community to push the boundaries of their comfort and grow beyond, and I’m realizing I crave a community that consistently does the same for me. 

Until my next monologue, 

Holly