Kimberly Figures it Out

Today is my 40th birthday. Today I'm embarking on a new project. 40 things to do while I'm 40. This list extends on my backpack list I wrote about when we went to see the Sharks. Many of these items are San Francisco related and take me through the city in new ways and to things I've always wanted to do. Some are general and allow for some spontaneity around the event and how it takes place. It's giving scavenger hunt in some places. More importantly, these are almost all items I will do with my friends and family. I intend to share this project with everyone and select things to cross off with my best friends. Adventures await!  This project, while filled with fun things to do, is more than a lark. It's about intentionally connecting and grounding myself in the present. It's about not letting time pass me by. My kids are (or will be soon!) young teenagers this year. Time with them is fleeting and while I'm responsible to prepare them for adulthood. I know t...

M y theme for the year in 2024 was "invest," I chose this theme because I noticed that I was running on empty and doing everything I could for other people while spending very little time thinking about what I needed. I have always believed that parents need to be good models for self-care for our kids but I wasn't doing this very well.  A little background: I decided to put myself through graduate school from 2019-2021 (yes, those were, we'll say, interesting years to have young children and be a full time student). This led to a career change from running child development centers to a different career in the field. This change led to an increase in my base salary which made me realize I didn't have much knowledge about personal finance or finance in general.  Back to 2024:  Invest as an overall theme helped me to think about investing in the broadest sense and truly was investing in myself. While I did have goals on physical health and mental health under the i...

Lately I have been getting into the garden one day a week to trim and work on the plants. The garden used to be one of my favorite places but over the past few years I wasn't getting out to garden very often and some of the plants became overgrown. My new routine is to put on a podcast and start working, before I know it several hours have passed.  I find that I feel close to myself when I am in the dirt or up a tree with clippers. As soon as I take that first smell of bitter dirt and sharp, sweet lemons in our garden I feel grounded.  Lately, I have been pruning our lemon trees that have become woefully overgrown. Trimming the lemons is like solving a puzzle with no answer and takes complete concentration, I trace back each branch to the main branches to see if I want to change the path or if it's growing solidly. I find this process very restorative and a direct analogy to my relationship with myself. I am paring down habits and ideas that aren't useful and making plans f...

For weeks, my house was abuzz with the excitement around the student government election both my middle schoolers are involved in. My son was running for 6th grade president and my daughter, an 8th grader, for student body president.  For my son, the stakes are pretty low. True to personality he told us, “I’m running for 6th grade president.” “How did that come about?”, we asked. “I just turned to the kid next to me and said, Let’s run together, I’ll be president.” Couldn’t be simpler.  For my daughter, there have been countless conversations about political strategy with us, with her friends and with other adults in her life. She had a game plan for asking for campaigning (don’t be thirsty but be brave is the gist of it). She evaluated each candidate by popularity level, perceived popularity levels and their possible elementary school ties. Quite complicated.  Cutting straight to the end of the story. He won. She lost.  And in that moment, one of my kids was celebra...

I promised myself to write a blog that was about me and about who I am today but I have not yet trusted what I might say. I'm worried I'll hurt someone's feelings or embarrass myself and I'm worried I'll be judged for being silly or small or whatever. But…. But …. I need to be real. I decided to get sober in March of 2022. I did it for my kids mostly because I was scared of who I wanted to become when I drank, which is someone who drinks and has fun and is the life of the party. The thing was, I wasn't that person. I was anxious and nervous and cut myself off because though I want to have fun, I am scared of repeating the past.  I've been sober for two full calendar years 2023 and 2024 and this year I will have my 3 year soberversary in March. I have just closed out my second set of sober holidays and this experience feels at once like a revelation and like nothing special.  The day of my last drink we were on vacation in Oceanside and I was in a bad mood. I...

I don’t have a bucket list, I have what I now think of as a “Backpack List.” The things I have to go out of the way to do but aren’t exactly lifelong dreams. Things I can strap my backpack on at the front door and set out to do or see or experience. I also have a hard time committing to possibly un-achievable goals like a bucket list contains so this is a way for me to have little dreams. Here’s the story of how I got to thinking of this concept.  NYE 2024 we spent celebrating at the San Jose Sharks game. The atmosphere was fun and exciting and the teal was on display. It was our first time watching the Sharks and the first time for me and the kids to see a hockey game in person. The stadium lowers down a giant fiberglass shark’s head that the players skate out of at the beginning of the game which was both exciting to watch happen but more fun for me to watch the shark handlers in the rafters getting the whole thing ready. I am really a sucker for logistics.  On the way home ...