Let’s talk about coffee shops.

I know we are all too well aware that around pretty much every street corner is a Starbucks or Peet’s staring you down and attempting to lure you in by throwing colorful poster ads (or those creepy pop-up ads on your phone that somehow know what you’re thinking about or looking at before you even fully realize it) in your face. And don’t get me wrong: I love me some Starbucks (sorry, Peet’s). But lately I’ve been finding that if I take the time to investigate or really listen to people’s suggestions, I find myself in new coffee shops and cafes right across the way from those mildly menacing and omnipresent chain coffee shops. Now, granted, I do live in a part of Southern California where around every street corner is another shopping mall or center overflowing with food, drink, and entertainment options (and that’s just on the street where I live). I am extremely fortunate in having the explorational abilities that I have. But I highly encourage you to look up what’s around you wherever you live and EXPLORE.

Coffee shops became a staple of my identity during the end of my freshman year of college. I was part of a music club that had booked a showcase night playing at this place I had never heard of: Paradise Perks. I was still new to Irvine and had done some adventuring but spent most of my time on campus with my friends and roommates. This place sounded intriguing, and got me out of my college bubble. Little did I know that it was about to change my entire life.

We played our showcase that night, and later on I learned that this cute little shop hosted a weekly open mic that would quickly become my home. I made some of the best friends of my life at this open mic, and when it eventually shut down we all gravitated to another the next town over called The Lost Bean (someone deserves a raise for creative brand names). We’ve made our home here on Monday nights for the last 3 years or so, and in recent months I’ve begun making multiple weekly stops to this particular coffee shop. It helps that they have an attached wine bar called The Lost Vine that hosts musical showcases Friday and Saturday nights, and that I’ve also now become close friends with a lot of the baristas here. The main appeal, however, is the fact that there is a cozy space in the heart of all the craziness that allows me to indulge my passions while talking with dear friends, meeting wonderful new people, and experiencing new drinks.

I’ve made it more of a point in the last year to venture out and try new spaces. One of my favorites when I’m solely in the mood for good coffee is a place called 7Leaves. It has a pretty wide variety of teas and assortment of snacks and goodies. Their specialty, however, is their signature crafted Vietnamese coffee. If you’ve never had Vietnamese coffee, then you’ve never experienced the effect of being punched in the face by caffeine, only to come to with more energy than before and an affinity for this thing that knocked you on your ass. The coffee is strong. I also order it with 5 extra shots because that’s what I needed to get through my shifts at the hotel, but even on it’s own the coffee is strong, and it’s got condensed milk in it along with other goodness, and it’s one of my favorite indulgences on the planet right now.

When I’m not looking for a caffeine rush, I’m scoping out new places for ambience and comfort. See, I as a person can be mildly boring and unadventurous. I frequently have the urge to be an exciting go-getter and adventure seeker, but my anxiety and just general laziness tend to kick in and keep me hooked on my computer screen crying over A Million Little Things. So I have to compromise. And living in Southern California, especially in the part of Orange County that I’m in, it’s hard to find a mildly adventurous thing to do that doesn’t involve spending a lot of money. Luckily there are some nice hiking spots, but I’m just starting to spread my wings with adventuring alone and hiking by myself still feels intimidating. I go for walks around my neighborhood but I can only do that for so long before it just feels like wasting time. There are those millions of shopping centers and malls at my disposal, but you can only walk through the same mall so many times before you get a little stir crazy. There’s the beach, but parking is tedious on weekends and seagulls are monsters. I could drive and explore neighboring cities, but then I end up in a new place facing the same dilemmas. And again, not that I’m complaining because I genuinely love where I live and am so excited to have so many things at my disposal. But when I’m in the mood for light adventure that doesn’t involve a lot of effort or money, my options get limited and I get frustrated (mostly with myself for not being more exciting of a person). I just want to be in a space that’s comfortable and allows me to choose when the introverted and extroverted parts of me come out to play.

So, scoping out coffee shops with a good book and/or my laptop has become a new hobby of sorts. I highly encourage other people to find those safe havens for themselves. I got lucky that I found The Lost Bean and The Lost Vine through my love of music, and now I couldn’t imagine my life without this place. It’s especially nice for someone like me who desperately craves to be out in the world and feeling like I’m part of something bigger than myself, but who doesn’t necessarily like being barraged by constant social interaction in uncomfortable spaces: I get conversation when I want it, peace to read or write when I need it, and happiness all-around every time I am there. I know people who have written screen plays and theses at their favorite coffee shop. I know people who have made lifelong friendships at coffee shops. I know people that have met the right person at the right time that will help them get their dream or passion off the ground. I know people who have bumped into the love of their life at a coffee shop (low-key kind of hoping that happens to me. We’re still hopeful). I know people who have experienced the best and worst moments of their life in a coffee shop, and they wouldn’t have it any other way because when you find the right space filled with the right people, a good coffee shop with the perfect cup of coffee makes everything just so much better.

Let’s talk about New Year’s Eve.

Ever since I could remember, New Year’s Eve has always been the one day of the year that I truly look forward to more than any of the others. With the lights, the parties, the turning of one calendar year to the next — magically ridding everyone of their ills, vices, bad habits, big mistakes, painful moments — signifying a cleansing change and revitalization of self, this was one day that I always wanted to make special. As a lover of cliches and symbolism, watching the massive clock projection in Time’s Square countdown in sync with the dropping of that infamous crystal-covered geodesic sphere to the moment you see one year flow harmoniously and effortlessly into the next continues giving me the butterfly feelings of hope.

However, the enormity of the potential held by New Year’s Eve and what comes immediately after inevitably always ends up putting equal parts excitement and stress into my brain (and there is an awful lot of excitement, so just imagine the stress on top of all the other anxious thoughts my brain always thinks). Every year always had to be an *actual* celebration with the full kit and caboodle: the ball drop on the TV, the large party with a group of people I’m close with, the fun outfits, the glasses, the Martinellis (later to be replaced with much too much champagne), the fireworks, the 12 grapes to bring good luck to each month of the new year, the dancing, the singing, the resolutions, the running around outside and blasting “Good Life” by OneRepublic — a tradition started in 2014 by my lifelong chosen sister and best friend who was visiting from Denmark. I had to look good, and feel good, and every year growing up I always mostly wanted someone to kiss on New Year’s (if we remember from my first post, I was convinced I should have had my lifelong soulmate at thirteen because I apparently had to be in love, married, and a mother to two kids by twenty-five… yikes). While that last little bit has become slightly more of a reality in the last two years, I still sometimes find myself overwhelmed by my expectations of the holiday. And when my own extravagant expectations aren’t meant, the disappointment I feel can sometimes swallow me whole for at least a week after.

In 2005, I felt my first real pang of that disappointment. My dad was shipped out for work; my younger brother was fast asleep by 9pm. My mom and I were the only two souls awake and in my house to celebrate the change from 2005 to 2006. Just a few months before the end of the year, my mom’s grandma had passed away from breast cancer. It was the first in a string of big deaths — particularly on my mom’s side of the family — that shaped and colored the next few years in ways we never really imagined. But we of course had no way of knowing that then. However, it being a big blow to my mom made her realize she just wanted a quiet New Year’s Eve so that she could let that year go without too much fuss since it had been a painful one. I, always having that sense of urgency to make NYE the literal best night of my life every year, ended up watching the ball drop alone with my mom sleeping on the couch next to me. While twenty-four year old me can now understand the need for a quiet New Year’s — especially in the wake of loss and heartbreak — eleven year old me was devastated. Eleven year old me made a promise to myself that I would always make sure I did something to celebrate the momentousness of a new year rolling in.

Since then, I’ve done just that. Every year has involved a party, friends, outfits, dancing, singing — the whole works. One year involved 9 hours spent at Disneyland trying to keep walkways moving when people wanted to stop and snag spots for the Disneyland countdown fireworks 5 hours ahead of time only to wind up in a planter at the end of Main Street across the street from my friends as we watched the faces of guests contort in anger and confusion as the fireworks failed to go off over the castle due to wind (but the fireworks CONVENIENTLY went off at California Adventure… you know… the complete opposite direction and opposite park from where we all were). The year after that luckily was spent solely with my then boyfriend after work where I got my first New Year’s Eve kiss and we took polaroid pictures while drinking champagne. I was on cloud nine that year, honestly. The following year involved me — single — swing-dancing and making out with a random guy at a party while dressed in a leotard and thigh high heels, then proceeding to kiss a few other friends of mine when the ball dropped and celebrating/crying over the fact that I had survived the year of my first real heartbreak.

Which lands us at this year’s shenanigans. This was my first New Year’s Eve in 3 years where I didn’t have to work at all. It involved a house party hosted by my some of my favorite friends, lots of good beer, enthusiastic karaoke, and a metric shit ton of people I didn’t know. There was a run to In n Out and Albertson’s before the party where I thirdwheeled my friends. I wore a pretty dress and curled my hair and then ended up in my friend’s room reading for an hour because I was overwhelmed by the amount of people/my own emotions. I sang karaoke. I missed a few key and important friends who were playing a gig to ring in 2019. I cleaned up part of my friend’s house when I was tired of talking to people. I didn’t kiss anyone this year or even get to flirt with someone (and I looked/felt good DAMN IT). I sat on a sidewalk with my friend at 4am and kept checking on people to make sure they were feeling okay. I helped kick out a few high school kids trying to engage in adult behaviors in my friends’ rooms. I spent some time enjoying myself, but most of the time thinking about what I wanted to be doing differently.

I didn’t have a lot of time to hype myself up over New Year’s Eve because I changed jobs three times this year, only finally landing on a job with steady hours and holidays off in mid-November. Prior to that, I was at a hotel with crazy hours that I was convinced for the longest time was where I was going to spend my favorite holiday (and I probably would’ve been working overnight). Before even the hotel, I had been at Disney which meant holidays were always a gamble. So when it came time for this holiday season in general, I found that I wasn’t prepared mentally. I had been braced for so long to endure the whole holiday season on my own that my new job with it’s paid holidays off came as a complete shock to my system. I hadn’t even really thought about the holidays at all so I feel as if I stumbled my way through them without really being present, almost trying too hard to realize that I had been home for Thanksgiving AND Christmas. Then New Year’s rolled around and I still hadn’t given a lot of thought or weight to it even though I had committed to the party a month prior.

On top of that, this year felt particularly unimportant. Last year was fueled by my breakup and made me feel a lot more courageous (aided by lots of wine, of course). Last year, I felt like I had something to prove, to show myself that I was going to be just fine in 2018. This year I was just back to being normal, not-heartbroken me. I did spend some time wondering what my ex was doing and pitying myself for feeling cute with no one to show off to. I felt boring and unimportant, lost in a sea of people I didn’t know that my friends were somehow navigating with much more ease than I could have done. And so even at a party that checked off most of the boxes of what I was looking for, I still felt like I was missing something: closeness.

But maybe that’s almost a good thing. It was a lesson to begin the new year 2019, a year I already feel will be a good one in my heart. It was a lesson in learning what I actually want instead of being wrapped up in the overly dramatized ideas of what I think I want. It was a lesson in learning to be okay with where I was, knowing that I will do everything to make the ringing in of 2020 the best damn New Year’s Eve of my life (thus far). It was a lesson in understanding that life is really what you make it and fill it with.

So from now on, the list is simple: surround myself with people I love, drinking good wine and celebrating all that we’ve been through in addition to what we hope for; be somewhere inviting and fun — maybe some years even spend it somewhere new at some big party or small venue as long as I’ve got friends by my side; and of course, 12 grapes and an outfit I feel FABULOUS in.

*”Good Life” by OneRepublic starts playing in the background.*

Let’s talk about sleep.

As a kid, I hated sleep. It meant all the adults were up doing cool adult things while I was stuck staring into the nightlight in the bathroom next to my room or playing with my stuffed animals in hopes that I would tire myself out.

I had what I recently learned is called FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out. I felt like everything fun happened at night. I felt that as long as slow, steady, quiet streams of conversation could be heard from the discomfort of my bed, I was missing out on what could’ve been — at a ripe old age of five, seven, or ten — the best moments of my life.

Being the adult that now stays up much too late on a daily basis, I can confidently look back on those nights and realize I definitely wasn’t.

I’ve now come to the conclusion that the illusion of adventure and excitement only truly exists on weekends (the realization I’ve only recently come to since I started a normal M-F, 7-4 desk job after working at Disneyland and hotel over the last few years), and even then it takes a lot of work to make that happen.

Most nights are actually spent desperately awaiting sleep. It’s the time when I get to avoid people I don’t want to communicate with in any facet, put on my favorite fuzzy socks, and curl up in my bed watching any one of my favorite shows on Netflix or YouTube. When I’m out on the town or at an event, I’m usually low-key excited for the event to be over so that I can jump into my comfiest blankets and take out my contacts with reckless abandon.

And let’s not even get me started on the thrill of napping. Those were a big no-no for me as a kid because — again — there were swings I had to almost fall off of, make-believe adventures my friends and I had to embark on, and dreams to chase. And all of that still holds true as an adult, but in the middle of all of that I find myself revitalized by the mere *idea* of getting to nap and avoid all adult responsibility for 20 minutes (just kidding, an hour… okay three hours because how important are dishes really, anyways?).

Now don’t get me wrong: I love my friends, and music, and little adventures I get to go on that make my life magic; I love the excitement of planning trips and cooking and planning for shows; and I would rather do those things with my close friends instead of sleep any day. But given the chance to be in a space with people I don’t know as an evening wears on or be in my house cooking and getting ready for the eventual date I get to go on with my pillows and blankets, I’d choose the latter any day (night?).

Now if I could just get my friends to agree to constant sleepovers or nap dates so I could have the best of both worlds, that would be supreme.

Let’s talk about being an adult.

Sometimes it still honestly surprises me that I’m allowed to run around making my own day-to-day, possibly life-changing decisions without adult supervision… because I am the adult.

Sometimes I’m driving to work, or grocery shopping, or out with friends on a week night wondering when I’m supposed to feel the way I thought being an adult would feel. I remember looking to people older than me as a kid with awe and reverence because I was so excited to one day be “that age” with as much wisdom and togetherness as I thought all adults had.

Sometimes it makes me giggle — then shudder — thinking about how wrong I was.

I grew up and pretty much went through high school thinking that I was going to: have a high school sweetheart I would marry and live “happily ever after with”, have and raise my own kids (two — two boys named Theo and Elliott or a boy and a girl named Elias and Ella), and have a musical empire under my belt with theatrical stage shows, multiple Grammy awards, and adoring fans asking me to sign one of many of my CDs with the signature I perfected all through childhood — all by the time I was 25.

Well now the joke is on me.

I’m 24, just starting to get my fingers into the soil of music where I want to plant my ideas and dreams. My hair is purple. I wear a fake nose ring most days. I sometimes make elaborate meals for dinner one day and then eat vegan chicken noodle ramen, popcorn, and kale chips the next. I still tend to dress like the five year old with the *wild* dreams of motherhood and ultimate stardom but with a little more style [luckily]. I definitely don’t have a high school sweetheart to fawn over, and am nowhere near any aisles I could walk down in a white [possibly pink] dress. And don’t get me started on how I feel about kids now.

But the fun thing is that being an adult means I get to dye my hair purple, and wear a fake nose ring, and chase my dreams with reckless abandon because it’s finally my own life to live with nobody guiding me towards their ideas of who I should be.

It also means learning to embrace adult responsibility in everyday life, like taking your car to get a new battery before work starts then Lyfting to work then back to the auto shop at the end of the day. Luckily for me I also ended up with two female drivers, which was nothing short of a miracle in my mind. It means snoozing your alarm for an hour but still getting up in the nick of time to get done what you need to get done. It means figuring out a balance between thinking of your future when making decisions and living purely in the moment as much as possible to enjoy as much as you can at the age you are. It means owning up to your bullshit when you’re wrong, standing up for yourself when you’re right, and knowing your boundaries over what feels good or not. It means helping where you can and asking for help when you need it. It’s learning and growing and changing and powering through the mundane bits of work on and for yourself so that one day you’re looking in the mirror at this badass human who has survived everything good, bad, and wonderfully strange that life has thrown at you.

I might still need adult supervision through some of it, though. Just in case.

Hi, my name is Ashley.

For those or any of you deciding this is a blog you want to read, I want to introduce myself more fully: I am a 24 year old living in Southern California who finds more and more each day that I might not be “SoCal material”. But we can get to that later on.

Like everyone who ends up down here (especially from somewhere else — hi, I’m a formal NorCal native, which feels like coming from an entirely different state sometimes), I spent three years working at Disneyland thinking it was a dream job only to slowly realize it was actually a living nightmare. So then I ended up at a hotel, realized I was 1000% over interacting with people face-to-face on a daily basis, and somehow ended up at a desk job as an underwriter for a financial wellness company. But don’t worry, it’s actually much more enjoyable than it seems, though I do miss hitting my daily step count by my third hour of work.

I also write, play, and perform my own original music at open mics and some small showcases between here and NorCal. I’m surrounded by an insanely talented group of musicians and performers who also happen to be some of my closest friends/most favorite humans on the planet right after my mom. So this blog will definitely touch on more of that later on.

Which brings me to the creation of this blog. I’m a writer. I’m a “big life questions” kind of thinker. I’m an anxiety-motivated ball of energy and optimism… on most days. And what with the new year just starting — providing the blank canvas for us to reinvent ourselves with new intentions and new ideas that can only come from the jump between one calendar year to the next — I decided that I would take all the thoughts that float in between my ears daily and jot them down. Publicly. Mostly without proof-reading. Or any real format/style in mind. We’ll see how this goes…

So every day for the next year I want to write about something that matters to my heart (see what I did there?). Today: introductions and formalities. Tomorrow: thoughts on New Year’s Eve and the power of wandering. The day after that: honestly, who knows!! That’s what keeps this all interesting at the end of the day (hopefully). There will be conversations about the day-to-day adventures and goodness found in unexpected places, rants about things I read about or see or — quite frankly — do, updates on the music I am in the process of recording and releasing. Some days will tug on your heartstrings, others will bring a smile to your face or a feeling of connection while others will make you question why you continue to read this thing. But at the end of every post and every day, the ultimate goal is giving you — and me — reason to find the nuggets of hope and goodness in everything that comes our way over the next year.

2019, here I come. And I’m so excited to share this year with you. Cheers. ✨