Birthday Gratitude

Thank you for being here with me.

I have two events coming up in July:

• PORTLAND, ME: Saturday, July 19th, 6:30 PM at Back Cove Books. I’ll be in conversation with the delightful Hannah Orenstein (I loved her latest, Maine Characters). More info and RSVP here.

• BOSTON (Okay, Cambridge) MA: Monday, July 21st, 7:00 PM at Love Struck Books. Chatting with the Boston Globe’s own Meredith Goldstein, who I have followed and admired for ages. More info and RSVP here.

I love getting to meet folks IRL and would be thrilled to see you there!

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Today is my birthday. I am 46 years old. (If you’d like to get me a present, please review All’s Fair in Love and Pickleball on Amazon and Goodreads.)

I am not especially precious about birthdays, other than I am really excited and grateful to get to have another one. I don’t take the privilege of aging lightly. I know I am lucky to be here.

My second birthday. That doll was in the box!

I don’t feel old, but I do feel behind on some things. This is not bad, per say; I don’t mind being out of the loop and catching up months — or years — later on trends. For example, did you know that everyone wears thong bikinis now?! I finally tuned into Love Island USA for the first time a few weeks ago, and thought to myself, “Wow look at all these butt cheeks! This must just be because it’s reality tv!” But then I expressed my butt-shock to some friends and it turns out, everyone is showing butt these days at the beach. It’s not just hot, 24-year-old, soon-to-be influencers, living on-camera in a villa in Fiji. I had no idea!

Some Love Island butts courtesy of their Instagram.

I am, quite literally, behind on behinds.

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For the last three years, I have been writing regularly in a daily gratitude journal. (This is the one I use.) I don’t have many consistent rituals in my life, but somehow this one has stuck; I think because it takes me less than a minute and I can do it from my bed, just after I pop in my retainer and right before I go full Mad Max with my c-pap mask. And because it does, truly, help my mental health.

You see the resemblance, right?

The most important thing about keeping a gratitude journal, imho, is not judging what you put in there. You simply cannot beat yourself up for writing “saw a hummingbird,” approximately every other day in your gratitude journal. Hummingbirds never cease to be amazing, first of all! But also, sometimes, that is the best you’ve got. Maybe you’ve had a shit day, or you’re overwhelmed with the state of the world, and all you can come up with is, “saw a hummingbird.” Or, “saw butts on Love Island.”

Do not judge the things you’re grateful for. Take the joy where you can get it.

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I’m not going to lie though, sometimes writing in a gratitude journal feels like a pointless exercise. It has been a hard week, month, year, years in Los Angeles. It has been a hard week, month, year, years everywhere. Lately, I’ve felt pretty hopeless about it all. The collective grief is a lot.

But when I flip through my stack of gratitude journals from the last three years, I am able to see a few things very clearly:

1. I have so much to be grateful for.

2. There are many good, kind people in the world, and in my own personal world.

3. Hummingbirds are seriously very cool! I feel so happy every time I see one! I’m never not going to be grateful for a freaking hummingbird.

This is all to say that today, on my birthday, I am very grateful for you, the people reading this. For my friends who schooled me on butt cheeks! For NicOlandria, and my friend’s 6-year-old son teaching me a game called “Poisonous Tree Frog” this weekend, the photos I got today of my daughters at camp, and negronis, and how the air felt cool this morning when I went outside with my dogs. I’m grateful for the all of the “Nothing beats a Jet 2 holiday!” tiktoks. For Ruby Dixon, who keeps writing alien romance books, and for Jeff Hiller’s new memoir, and the Las Culturistas podcast. (Okay, shirt!) And for the people helping, everywhere.

In honor of my birthday, I’ve donated this week to CHIRLA, World Central Kitchen, and the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund.

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My next newsletter will be out in a few weeks and will be something new I am trying out, which I am calling My Joy List. It’s literally just a list of all the things I’m liking right now. I’m experimenting in this newsletter! Exciting.

Love you all,

Kate