Personal Update: Reflections from a Year of Fear & Triumph

I have never considered myself a brave person. I have done many scary things in my life, but the most worthwhile and successful of them came with a great deal of fear. I think the perfect example of this is learning to ski in my late 20s. I skied as a child and could zoom down the mountain with no fear. But as an adult, I understood the risks more. Adults have heard stories on the news of people getting catastrophically injured from running into a tree or getting caught in an avalanche, and questioned whether the risks are worth it. Kyle and I had a negative experience skiing in Canada in 2022 on a hill that was way beyond our ability level, making getting out on the slopes again a terrifying prospect.

An experience like that is a pivot point because you can either take it as a sign that you were NOT meant to do it, or you can take the failure as a launching point to your next great success. My desire to learn how to ski and experience the world in a new way was greater than my fear of failing. So I tried again, and this time, I succeeded.

I finally realized that bravery is not the absence of fear but choosing to put one foot in front of the other every single day with the fear as a weight upon your back. It's like my favorite Georgia O'Keeffe quote:

“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let

it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”

I'm convinced the difference between people who achieve success, whether it be monetary, business, or the success of creating a life that they love, comes down to how you react to fear and failure. I would love to share with you some of the behind-the-scenes of this year, the good, bad, failures, and all.

The Year that Tried to Break Us

If you've been around since this spring, you know that in April of this year, Kyle was let go from his job as the worship leader at our church where we had been since before its founding. With it, we lost not only income but our friends, our community, and truly, trust in most of the people we knew in middle Tennessee. I shared the full story of that here, but suffice it to say, the shock gutted us to our core. I learned that the sting of betrayal and the anger that comes with it is a feeling worse than grief or despair because if not dealt with, it will poison you from the inside out. Finally, 8 months later, I can write this without reliving those feelings of anger, because I can see now that the fiery furnace we were plunged into was the catalyst we needed to turn our circumstances from coal into diamonds.

For a few weeks, we toyed with the idea of Kyle looking for a job at a new church but he needed a break from that type of work. I think anyone who has been in ministry before will understand what I mean. We eventually decided that Kyle would come on full-time with me in our social media business to help film, speed up the renovation projects, and build a YouTube channel from the ground up. If you go back and reread that sentence, you'll notice that none of those things unequivocally bring in an income. I was honestly terrified. Income from social media can be feast or famine. We've had 5-figure months and months where we made pennies.

Hiring Kyle was sort of one of those trust-the-process type situations. Immediately there was an increase in the quality of content, but more importantly, Kyle helped me develop my eye for videography and editing (which is what he studied in college). Kyle also pushed us to outsource some of the admin work that bogged me down. We hired a management agency, and doing that created an immediate shift in where I could prioritize my energy. Instead of emailing brands to secure brand deals, I could focus on growing my accounts, connecting with those in our community, and expanding my content into different platforms. To put things in perspective, at the beginning of 2024, I had 60k followers across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. As of this week (December 2024), we now have over 365k followers. It took me 1.5 years to get to 60k followers, and the growth absolutely exploded over the summer and fall by 6-fold.

But even more than the shift in our business, was the shift in our lifestyle. I had already discovered for myself the stress relief that working from home brings, but Kyle experienced it for the first time this summer. He was no longer getting sick all the time, we had time to go to the gym together and most of all, we had time to finish our camper van and travel.

The Van That Tried to Break Us

Kyle's camera broke midway through the van build

Buying and restoring Flo was the biggest undertaking of the year for us. I only shared a very small percentage of the process, but we spent several thousand hours building her. The build process itself had many highs and lows and was definitely the most difficult project Kyle and I had ever done! Kyle built from scratch an entire electrical and water system and added walls, cabinets, and ceilings to a space that did not have one straight line or 90-degree angle. It has given him so much confidence in his construction abilities, that we have begun contemplating building a house next!

There was one very disheartening aspect of this process, and that was the mechanical issues we encountered. I did not share this online, but we had a recurring issue with the van not starting which neither our local trusted mechanic nor the Mercedes Dealer could diagnose. Everyone said it was in perfect condition, but the van would not start about 80% of the time on the first try. Given that we like to travel to remote areas, being in a situation where the van wouldn't start could be a significant road bump if not a very dangerous situation.

About 2 weeks before we were set to leave, Flo wouldn't start in a Lowe's parking lot. It was none of the typical issues (starter, dead battery, etc), and when the van was finally done, Kyle and I had to decide if we were going to go on our big road trip and hope the van always started or skip the trip and wait for a back-ordered part which may or may not fix the issue since no one could diagnose it. We finally decided to go on our trip anyway because, as I reasoned with Kyle, it always did eventually start (sometimes it just took some gear shift jiggling).

The first 3 or 4 days of our trip we held our breath and prayed every time we tried to start it. There were a couple of times that Kyle had to spend a few minutes jiggling the gear shift, but miraculously, about 5 days in, the problem completely went away. Since then, we have never had Flo not start. We still have no idea what resolved the issue!

We spent about two months this year on the road and it was a truly life-changing experience. I got to see so much of the country I had never explored before, and it gave me a new perspective on the importance of land preservation. Kyle and I also learned to work as a team even more than before. Being in such a small space with very limited storage gave me an appreciation for minimalism but also for our house and most importantly, our dishwasher!

The House That Nearly Broke Us:

+Moving and House Flood Update

This might not be obvious from my content, but I have a love-hate relationship with our house. Maybe more of a hate-hate. We bought our house in 2020 and while we got it for an amazing deal and interest rate, Kyle and I were very naive and bought a lemon. Our realtor didn't know what he was doing, and we found substantial issues after moving in that our home inspector did not notice (like... the fact that half our kitchen was rotted and moldy, for example). We also chose our house for many of the wrong reasons. Looking back, the things about our house that really made me fall in love with it were superficial or cosmetic and were things I could add to any house (like the beams in the kitchen) or something I didn't end up using often (our 2nd story deck or our gazebo)

When our house flooded during a thunderstorm this past May, we started seriously contemplating selling our house and moving. I have been in the Nashville area for 11 years now, and while I do love it, both Kyle and I want to live closer to the mountains. We had a new, much more knowledgeable realtor come over and go over what projects we need to focus on before moving. (I will share more about this in our next blog post about our 2025 project list!)

We also had a city utility person come to our house to help us fix the drainage issues that caused our house to flood. They plan on digging a larger drainage ditch in our front yard to correct the flooding and will see if it is possible to fix the storm drain at the end of our street so the water doesn't back up in our backyard. This is amazing news because this means it would be paid for by the city and not by us.

Looking ahead to 2025

I am a huge New Year's Resolution girly, so I've spent the end of December reflecting on the year and setting goals for 2025. Kyle and I anticipate selling our house next year (!!!) There are a lot of variables as to when because of the repairs that need to be made and the question marks of being self employed. After our road trip in October and November, we have narrowed down our search of states to live in. We want to move further north, but we also want to live near national parks and mountains. Our favorites after our October trip are Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. Unfortunately, these are also some of the most expensive states in the country to live in, so we are weighing all our options!

I also have some huge plans for our business this year, and I have so many content ideas that I cannot wait to bring to life.

Thanks for being here in 2024, let's make 2025 our year!

xoxo,

Melissa