No postage required
*A Christmas Card from me
A quick note before I get started — this is going to be my LAST post for 2024! After a pretty exhausting few months, I’m giving myself a little bit of a creativity recharge during the last week of the year, and I will very much look forward to seeing you all in 2025!
Dear Kula Diaries,
When I was a kid, I excitedly waited for Christmas Cards to start arriving in the mail. My mom took all of them and taped them to a door in our house, so within a few weeks, we had an entire door filled with Christmas cards from our friends and family. I get significantly less Christmas cards than I did as a kid, but I still tape them up in my kitchen out of habit.
Each year, I remember that there were always ‘those families’ who wrote lengthy ‘newsletters’ describing the highlights of their year: So and so got into Harvard. So and So was in the Honor Society. And So and So got a huge promotion. I wondered how those families ended up having such perfect lives, when I always felt like I never did anything ‘right’. As a kid, I’d make snarky remarks about these newsletters, because I could tell that they were presenting a veiled truth … but when I think about them now, I realize that these newsletters were very much the pre-social media version of an Instagram highlight reel. Namely, life is usually a bit more complex than what appears on the surface — but does anybody really want to share the whole truth? And, in fact, do they really need to?
During one particularly challenging year, I had been tempted to send out my own satirical version of a holiday newsletter, fraught with more accurate headlines:
I’m not quite as cynical these days and I have a different viewpoint on the experience of the Christmas Newsletter. While sending out a ‘highlight’ reel might be underexposing the much more complex and nuanced reality of life… I have to ask myself… what good would that type of newsletter bring? If I am to believe everything that I say that I believe — wouldn’t a person be better off crafting the experience that they want to feel and remember, rather than the one that they don’t? Is it possible that in the writing down of the vision of a year gone by — that we can actually discover the gold that was hidden in the cracks? Is it possible that sharing the energy of feeling satisfied with what is… will help us create more of what we want?
So, I decided that this week — on the heels of Christmas — I’d like to write out my own version of a short Christmas newsletter to share with you. I went back through the depths of my cell phone and I picked out ONE (ok… maybe 2) photos from each month to share in my digital Christmas Card. This was actually a really beautiful way to reflect back on the year, and I highly recommend it if you want to recharge your spirit and appreciate all of the good that exists — even when things have been tough or challenging.
I hope that this letter finds you well, wherever you are in your life. I haven’t sent out a Christmas card in… well, forever. So, I’ll try to provide a few updates. The past year has been filled with so many incredible ups and downs that it is hard for me to know where to begin: Do I talk about what I’ve done personally? Do I talk about my favorite hike… or my cats? Do I share how much I’ve struggled? Do I sugar coat it all? Most of my life is now spent doing something that has to do with my business (which also feels like my hobby)… but does anybody really want to hear about that? To be honest, sometimes life feels like I’ve just thrown a bunch of paint at a canvas and smeared it around — and then I’m supposed to stand in a gallery… stare for a long time… and try to find some meaning in all of it. Where does work end and life begin — or, is it possible to live in the smudged and blurred spaces between them?
Last year, we moved our little Kula HQ into its very first office — a quirky building in the small town of Snohomish, Washington, so this has been our very first year of existence in our own little building. While we were a little nervous about transitioning back to a life with a commute (albeit a short commute), we were very excited to turn our house back into our home (I’ve learned that there is a difference). What used to be the Kula office, has morphed into my watch making studio and permanent dance floor. Our home has become… once again… our peaceful sanctuary and I have reveled in the delightful experience of returning home from a day well spent — something that I did not realize how much I had missed.
In 2022, Aaron left his full time job at the railroad to figure out what he wanted to do next. After a year of doing stained glass, he decided to work with me at Kula Cloth, and we’ve been working together ever since. Over the past year, there have been a lot of changes at Kula — but our dedication to each other and our commitment to our small business has remained the same: while we were once just two lives that encountered each other for barely a few hours per day… we now spend every day together and, remarkably, still look forward to spending our weekends together.
When I think about this past year, the thing that stands out to me the most is my deep and profound satisfaction with where we are. I think I spent most of my life trying to chase some form of elusive ‘salvation’ that was going to come from achievements or success. A few weeks ago, we went to a Christmas dinner at our favorite restaurant, and as I was eating gammon with chakalaka, I was overwhelmed with a strange and profound feeling: a feeling of utter wholeness. I can’t credit this feeling to the chakalaka (which was delicious), and I don’t know why the feeling happened at that exact moment, but it started in my toes and bubbled up through my entire being until I could feel it emerge as tears in my eyes that I tried to hide, because it’s hard to explain crying at a Christmas dinner while eating chakalaka. I don’t share this because something ‘major’ happened to generate this feeling — but rather, because something didn’t. There was no number of sales… no target that was met… no big goal achieved… it was just a lovely Christmas dinner with my husband, when I realized that I didn’t need anything else in my life to be happy — other than the love that I already felt in my heart.
For me, it felt like a giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders — the sometimes oppressive weight of more — a constant drive to be something different or better than some impossible standard that I’ve held myself to for far too long. With the freedom of knowing that you don’t need anything else — suddenly, you open the door for goodness and creativity and life to flow naturally. Suddenly, you can look back on your year and you can smudge out the things that were a bit more difficult and blur them enough that they start to make sense when you step back and look at the painting as a whole. The colors begin to blend… shapes begin to emerge… and there is a trust and an understanding of the chaos.
I’m proud of what I’ve done this past year — as a person who had no prior experience running a company or starting a fulfillment center or designing products or hosting events … just a humble park ranger and railroad cop gone rogue … I think I’ve managed (with the help of a lot of people) to pull off some pretty amazing feats. I’ve laughed a lot this past year… hiked in beautiful places… spent time with people that I love and made time for petting my cats. I started a poetry text pod to send out weekly poems, and I now have over 2,600 subscribers who receive one poem per week. My little company has shipped tens of thousands of pee cloths all over the world this past year, and we’ve hosted events for thousands of more people. We’ve kept two small USA-based factories busy with work and we’ve supported artists and non-profits around the country. Somehow, in the midst of all of it, Aaron and I managed to fit in motorcycle rides together and a little bit of time away.
We each have been given our own little nook of the universe, and over this past year, this has become more evident to me: what we do with that nook matters. We have been told a lie about life — that it is about the endless pursuit of checking off objectives, and that these objectives will somehow make us ‘better’ than we are. Many years ago, I thought that owning a gear company would complete me — and then I started a gear company, and then I thought that having a very successful gear company would complete me … and then my company became successful, and I thought that I needed even more success in order to be reach some unattainable rung on an eternal ladder that never stops growing. The thing I’ve learned this year is the simplest thing of all: we are just here to let go of the things that we think, and to accept the things that we know — the knowledge that is known within our heart, because it is written on each and every atom of the mostly empty space that we occupy as a human on this planet.
The ripples of what each of us can create are so unbelievably powerful that even we cannot possibly fathom the effect that our actions can have across the world. Over the past year, I have proven to myself that when I follow my heart, good things happen. I have let go of trying to follow ‘the way’ that I’m supposed to do things… and I have learned to trust that when I lead with my heart, the way will find me. I believe, with every single fiber of my being, that sharing more kindness and love with others is the true nature of all things — and, as the true nature of all things, it wants to grow … it wants to accelerate… it wants to find the way to permeate the fabric of life.
Love has always been in me — in all of us — but I did not know always that it was there, because I thought it was something I needed to ‘get’ or ‘find’. It came to find me one day, when I was looking for it, but not expecting it to arrive. I had always assumed that the thing that would ‘save’ me would be starting a business… or achieving success… or getting validated by others, but none of those things were ever consistent enough. Like a temporary balm, I’d feel relief until the unease crept back in. And so, with the knowledge that it is not the things I do that make me who I am, but rather, simply how I am that makes me how I am… my Christmas wish this year is for all beings — and that includes you — to know the love that exists within them. It is only when we can nurture the true gift within us, that we can be open to receive everything else.
Rose and I had the opportunity to perform at the Flagship Seattle REI store this past weekend, and I wanted to share a video from our time there. This is ‘Ashokan Farewell’ by Jay Ungar + our own improv arrangement an Amazing Grace:
I don’t know what next year will bring, and I don’t need to know. The paint will continue to smudge and the colors will continue to blend, and I know that ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is determined not by what I’m supposed to see… but by how I choose to look at the painting. I can choose to see the infinite gifts that surround all of us at every single moment. I want to see the gifts. I can return to myself and share that with everybody — and as each of us comes back — we will light up the world. Not with a stands of bulbs, but from within. Christmas is a new birth, a new beginning — a coming back to who we always have been… and that, my friends, is something to celebrate indeed.
Kula Diaries friends — thank you all for a beautiful and full year of being here and sharing this little space with me. It brings me a lot of joy to be able to write about my own story… and hopefully help to inspire you on your own journey as well. We are all in this together… navigating a spinning orb in space and trying our very best to figure out this wild ride of life. As we take steps into a brand new year, may your hearts be open to the infinite possibilities that exist in every single moment of every day. As Melville writes, I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
I didn't grow up in a house that sent holiday cards or newsletters, but I always loved receiving them from others.
These days, I do a year in review at the end of every year. I've done them since 2009! https://kathryn-louise.com/category/year-in-review/ I always include a photo from each month (but the last couple of years are missing them because of a hiccup when I redid my website 🤦♀️). I love being able to look back and reminisce on years past - and learn things I'd completely forgotten, like I got to walk our best friend's dog down the aisle at their wedding!
As always, you and Rose play so beautifully! What a lovely treat for those last-minute Christmas shoppers (and employees!!) at REI! It was wonderful to see you and Aaron after you played!
I love that your mom taped your holiday cards to the door. My mom did, too! :) I still do the same when we receive enough cards to warrant it. We were "those people" who sent out newsletters, but ours were never as impressive as Harvard. I'm not sure my mom even told everyone I was in the Honor Society. I think she wrote(occasionally still writes) the newsletters as a way to summarize the year both for others *and* her. There were some road trips or vacations mentioned, but she also included some of the bad, like broken bones and such. I thought they were fairly well-balanced, but now I wonder what others thought of when they received them.
You are making me want to post a little 2024 recap on my store blog. I mentioned to Rob yesterday about having done quite a few more markets this year than last year's two. I did nine (three of which were two-day events) and had pieces in two different shows and another auction! And that was just the art stuff. I think it's easy to forget about all the things you've done over the year. I remember chatting with my doctor for a physical a few months ago and I was asked how my year since seeing them last had been and what I did.. I completely spaced the Europe and New Zealand adventures last year, even though they were both huge to me. It's so funny what we think of when put on the spot. I didn't even come up with "selling art" right away.