Purgatory.

I've spent the better part of a year waiting for help that hasn't come.

My kitchen is getting close to done… Hopefully.

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I’m up at my cabin working on the kitchen, alone. Today’s plans include writing this post, editing together a video about how to frame out a cased opening (something I recently learned), and to install trim around the two exterior doors in my new kitchen. At this point I cannot count how many holidays, birthdays, and friends’ events I’ve missed since since I bought this place. It’s so many that it doesn’t really even bother me anymore. Like I don’t care I’ll be doing

nothing but eating a depression burrito alone on Thanksgiving Day while installing baseboard in my kitchen.

The trajectory of this kitchen renovation has taken a bunch of unexpected twists and turns. It was a 1-2 month project max when it started in January, but as you’ll remember soon after that a series of storms pummeled the Sierra and left the house inaccessible for months. Delay #1.

The reason I had the kitchen demo’d in January was to make sure it was done by June, just in time for the busy summer season, hoping that would help me dig out of my financial hole. However, while my house was buried my contractor found other work and moved on. So by the time the house was accessible again, he wasn’t. Delay #2.

I did a big project in May that paid me more than enough to cover the cost of the whole kitchen. Unfortunately because of the way they broke up payments, I wasn’t fully paid until August, delaying my ability to pay for the cabinets, delaying my contractor’s desire to be on site. Delay #3.

Finally, I pulled together the rest of the money I needed to keep moving. This was in July. The cabinets showed up in September, at which point my contractor was already on another job after that OTHER other job. Delay #4.

Since coming up here nearly full-time in early September, I’ve been mostly working away alone editing the cabinets (a lot of them showed up wrong), painting them, trimming them out, and making other edits to the rest of the room to keep the project moving while the contractor was busy. During this time, my contractor has been frustratingly impossible to plan with. He’ll tell me he’s coming the next week on Thursday then not show up. He’ll tell me he’s coming three days the next week then only come one day.

In short, I’ve been in a pretty horrible waiting game all year long. Waiting for money. Waiting for people to do the things they said they’d do. Waiting for materials to arrive. Waiting to return to a life where I can take care of myself.

I won’t be doing anything for Thanksgiving this year. I didn’t do anything for my birthday. I have missed so much of the past five years. First, because I was shooting a TV show, then because of the pandemic, now because of the holding pattern I’m in with the kitchen. The reason I tend to get stuck up here is that I’ll make plans to meet with a contractor or subcontractor, make the drive from LA, then find out they can’t come when they said they could but a week later. Multiply that over and over again, month after month, and you get a recipe for what I have now - deep cabin fever and the terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that not only am I missing life, I have been for years.

I love my house and appreciate it. But while I’m here I miss friends, seeing people, just the energy of a city, the ability to workout and take care of myself, dating and sex, feeling visible (to people who actually know me), and so on. It’s incredibly isolating to be here for months on end and not at all what I had planned when I bought this place. My plan was to come up 1-2 weeks a month (hopefully not alone) and rent it out while I’m not here to pay for the content and renovations I want to make. I want to be making better content but that costs money - I can’t both be doing projects quickly AND editing them on top of being an interior designer, occasional host, designing products (I have a really fun lighting collaboration coming up), updating/cleaning/maintaining two houses and yards. Professionally, I need help but can’t afford it. Everything I have been doing to improve my quality of life and provide myself with financial stability feels like it’s done quite the opposite. I have never felt less financially stable and less sure of myself than I do now.

The kitchen nearing its completion stage is bringing up a lot of random thoughts. Firstly, Joey (ex boyfriend) helped me pack away the old kitchen in December. It’s weird to pack things up in one season, in one life, and anticipate unpacking them in a new season, in the same life that is logistically/emotionally so much different. It’s hard not to get sad about moving back into the kitchen without someone who helped you move out, even if that person wasn’t the right person for you.

Another thought it’s bringing is that I think a lot of resentment I’m feeling about the project stems from the fact that I feel like I’ve earned better. You work your way up in a career and at a certain point you don’t want to be doing the grunt work. If I were retired, I’d think nothing of tinkering around with my house. But I’m not. Frantically trying to finish your kitchen as fast and cheaply as possible, all the while not knowing how to do most of the things you are doing, isn’t really that fun. I’ve been working since I was a kid and by now I would love to be able to just be like “let’s do this!” but not have to “do this” by myself.

And that brings me to another thing. So many people in my life keep telling me how fun it is to watch me build my kitchen. And sometimes when people say that I want to be like “DO YOU WANT TO BUILD YOUR OWN KITCHEN?” I am thankful that people are interested in the project, but before you tell someone something is fun, make sure you’d want to do it yourself. Make sure you’d want to be building your own kitchen full time while also trying to do your overwhelming job. I meet people all the time who say they’ve never even painted a room so I’d guess most people would feel kind of overwhelmed trying to renovate a kitchen alone in the woods.

I wouldn’t be writing any of this if I weren’t fearful that at a certain point in the future someone would look at everything I have and assume someone helped me with it or there was someone secret behind the scenes really paying for it all. There’s not, and it’s been a slog for that reason. In a social media world where so many content creators make everything look easy (to the detriment of those trying it at home, struggling).

My dad came to visit over the weekend which was really nice because we got to have some good conversations and he helped me a bunch with my yard. He also chopped all my wood, which was a huge bonus. The downside is that my dad loves to neg, meaning he loves to find subtle ways to make you feel small. His tactic this time involved listing a bunch of projects that should be done around the house and acting like they were simple and easy to tackle. The moral of the story there is that if you can’t do these things you’re just being a baby or acting weak. The projects themselves would be doable if I already wasn’t overloaded with a laundry list of pre- and post-natural disaster fixes I already have to do. And I actually do work, even if you don’t get what my job is (it’s fine sometimes I don’t either).

Neither of my parents really understand what I do or take it seriously. Recently, my mom told me that the kitchen I’d designed for her and procured over $100,000 in sponsored appliances/materials/lighting for had constituted a financial gift TO ME. In her mind the money they had to spend on construction was spent to somehow help me (to elevate my career?). This was really hurtful to me because it also showed she didn’t view my design work as valuable. In addition to their kitchen, I’ve also paid, with my labor and my actual money at times, to furnish almost her entire house. I think I’ve internalized their dismissal of my work as meaning that it wasn’t intellectually engaging or real “work.” And I think that’s caused me not to take my own work seriously, which really only became detrimental the last few years when I’ve fallen behind work-wise because I haven’t wanted to work too hard on something that people don’t see as “work.”

I like what I do because I like communicating. Just yesterday I was thinking I might put some effort into applying for full- or part-time work at a startup or another appropriate outlet next year. But as soon as I thought about that I realized doing so would mean I would be able to make even less content than I have time for now. I’d have to retire from writing, from doing projects and making videos about them, from the prospect of writing another book. My goal is to make more and communicate more, not less. So I probably won’t be applying to work at Trader Joe’s anytime soon, though I have honestly thought about it.

I have started, erased, and started this essay twice already and I guess I’m having a hard time getting to the point. I guess the point is that I am sick of living my life like this and that there really is no aspect of my life that is working right now. I feel fat and gross after gaining weight, my confidence in my decision to buy this house decreases daily, I have no romanic life, I hate being alone, I don’t have tools and resources to do what I want career wise, and I’m FRUSTRATED.

I was recently at a conference and I met some other influencers/content creators with much smaller followings than me. But they all had help making their content. Assistants, social media managers, agents who… BRING THEM WORK?!? I am one of the few people I know who is at my level doing all of this myself. And I’m sick of working alone. And the only way out, just like so many other things, is MAKE MORE MONEY. So I’m in a waiting game until I can get the financial weight of this house off my shoulders, at which point hopefully I’ll be able to have the career reset I’m looking for.

I’m in a bad spot. Intellectually I understand that there’s some great things going on. For one, my house would probably sell for a million dollars if I tried to sell it now based on comps in the area. But I don’t want to sell this house so that’s not much comfort. My goal is to keep this house forever, rent it out while I need to financially, then have it for myself to share with friends and family.

But a year of waiting for this kitchen after three years of planning, two and a half years of appliances in the garage, three years of tile sitting in the garage, is just kind of bad for the soul. If the house wasn't so tangled with my financial stability, it would be different.

Kelly invited me to a party the other night, one of her friend’s birthdays. I told her I would love to come but didn’t know if I could be in LA. “I have to wait and see if the contractor can come, just like I have been the past months. So I can’t go anywhere.” “You’re in purgatory,” she responded. And I felt like I was.

Yeah, that’s a little dramatic. My situation isn’t that bad. Don’t worry, I’m not so out of touch that I think my life is the hardest because I’m doing a kitchen renovation. But I don’t think you’d love being stuck alone in a big house in the woods, covered in storm damage, fretting about money, waiting for help from people you can’t rely on, and trying to figure out how to solve a bunch of problems you have no idea how to solve.

This is a very negative post and that’s kind of by design. We’re coming into a part of the year where a lot of people start to compare their families and experience with the seemingly perfect families and experiences people share online. In a few weeks/months (depending on what press exclusive we land for my kitchen reveal) you’ll see images of me smiling in my new kitchen and it will all seem fun and frivolous and stupid. I want you to know that I sacrificed a lot for that moment. One year of waiting-purgatory-hell and two more years of planning and panicking about how I’d pull it off.

Thanksgiving Day I thought I might do something fun for myself, take a break and make some paintings I’ve been wanting to make. But I decided against that. The best thing for my mental health right now is gettin this kitchen done so I can finally start renting this place out in the new year. In 2024 I want to be able to go out to eat. In 2024 I want to date and have sex. And most of all in 2024 I want to be able to be in a place where I can take care of myself physically and get myself the fuck out of this isolation.

Yesterday, as my contractor was leaving I let him know this is the last week we will be working together. There’s not much left to do but I know if I keep working with him he will keep stringing me along like he has been. Originally, he said he’d be here Monday - Wednesday and Thursday - Saturday this week. But by yesterday that had changed to just Saturday and who knows if he’ll actually show up. So I’ve hired Justin, the trustworthy carpenter from TV show, to come up, help me finish, and help me fix some of the mistakes made by the other contractor. I’ll pay the original contractor for whatever he finishes, but I can’t handle the stress of waiting for him to not show up anymore.

I feel a lot better after making this decision because I can finally see and end to this project. My vibe next year is to start living again. There has got to be a way of reaching our goals and working on big projects without completely losing the ability to stay healthy and have some social time.

This Thanksgiving I’m mostly thankful this void of a year is almost done.