Kimberlee K.

Every year gives us the opportunity to do what so many signs in so many homes suggest: live, laugh, and love. And if there were a fourth L in that equation, I think it would be learn.

Every day we have the opportunity to start learning something new, and every year we have the opportunity to try things we’ve never tried before. This year, I’m proud to say that I leaned into this fourth L. I embraced a beginner’s mentality and said, over and over, let’s try it!

Here are eight things I tried this year:

1) Embroidery

For my 27^th birthday, my friends and I created a series of paintings using the Princess Diaries style balloon dart method. I kept a handful of the paintings, and when I moved into my apartment I was unsure how/if I could display them. I’d had them on my walls for years and if I’m honest, I wanted to refresh them, as they’d grown kind of stale to me. I didn’t want to throw them away, I just wanted to look at them in a new way, so I decided that I would try to embroider on top of them. I had never done embroidery before, as I’m a counted cross stitcher by trade, but I thought, why not? I watched a handful of YouTube tutorials that led my Instagram algorithm entirely into the embroidery space, and then I took a pencil to the painting, drew an outline for stitches, and just went for it. I’m not finished yet, but I’m loving how it’s turning out!

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2) Poetry

Over the years I’ve tried to write the occasional poem, but was never sure if I was doing it right. Half the time I read poetry, I don’t like/understand the cadence, and it often makes me feel dumb, so I assumed there was no way I could get into it myself. But I like the brevity of a poem and the way that big feelings can be found in small sentences, so I wanted to try. To my delight, I’ve found that in some cases poems were the correct home for feelings and stories I’ve been wanting to tell for a long time. And while I don’t know if I’m any good, that’s not really what’s important. I feel lighter knowing that those feelings are out and I’ve been loving a new writing challenge.

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3) Strut workouts

In this post back in April I mentioned Allie Bennett’s treadmill strut workouts that I found on Instagram. She has an entire catalogue of playlists on Spotify that are designed to start at a specific speed and increase after each song, allowing you to strut on beat the whole time. It was a welcome addition to my workout routine that made it hard not to throw my arms in the air while I walked on the treadmill at my local gym. Thirty and forty minute workouts went by in a blink and I always felt refreshed after.

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4) Foods I claimed not to like

You know how growing up we find the foods we like, dislike, and hate, and we spend a lot of time teaching friends and family our absolute no’s until it’s second nature for everyone around us? Well, I have a list of hard no’s (mushrooms, peanut butter, cilantro) and I had a list of what I now realize were soft no’s. No’s that were only no’s for a certain period of time, and are now yes’s. This year has been a case study of myself, as I fight the impulse to say, I don’t like that, just because I have been saying it for 30 years, and instead deciding to try it again. Some things are still hard no’s, some things are turning into yes’s, some things have made me wonder how much sooner I could have discovered a love of my life (looking at you, sour cream). Either way, it’s fun to learn.

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5) Matcha lattes

One of my goals for 2024 was to perfect my matcha order at coffee shops, because I was tired of being too scared to approach the counter. I even bought this at-home matcha set to complete some of the trial and error behind closed doors.  And it worked! Now I can walk in with (relative) ease and say, “Me? Yes, I’ll have an iced matcha latte with almond milk and two pumps of vanilla, please. Thank you!”

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6) Pressing flowers

In the September chapter of Growing Seasons, author Kristin Johns talks about the art of pressing flowers. Shortly after I read it, I had a birthday and was gifted lots of gorgeous flowers that I decided would be perfect test subjects. And while I didn’t nail it, it was still fun to see the results. I ended up laminating the flowers and making a bookmark, which will now always remind me of that birthday and this year as a whole.

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7) Procreate

For a while on Instagram I saw a lot of artists working in Procreate, which is a digital painting app. It is especially geared toward tablets, so when I got an iPad over the summer I thought it was the perfect time to try it out. I took a class on Skillshare to learn the ins and outs of the program and then spent a good chunk of one Saturday drawing a wall of my apartment. It didn’t turn out perfect, but I loved it anyway! I think it would be fun to draw all of my walls, to show the apartment the way it is right now, or at least the way I see it. It’s a way to capture the memory of it without a straightforward picture, you know? Highly recommend if you’re interested in drawing and want a little boost in getting started.

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Here’s to trying new things in the new year! May we not shy away from new opportunities, new foods, new mediums, and new choices—we never know where they might lead us or what they’ll teach us about ourselves.