How Did I get Here?

Does anyone ever wake up one day and decide to change careers, give up their homes and lives, and step into the unknown to try something completely contrary to who they thought they were?

I don’t think it happens overnight. It took years and a lot of unrelated events coinciding to show me the door on the life I was living and strike out on adventure I always thought was a unrealistic and terrifying.

My whole life, all I ever wanted was to live in Nashville and make music dreams come true, become a “midwife of dreams” as Holly Gleason so eloquently calls it. Caitlyn Smith’s song “This Town is Killing Me” came out as I was considering walking away from my career to chase a dream beyond my business card. Burn out is real and I knew I was going to die if I kept living my life like I was living it. I just couldn’t catch my breath long enough to figure out what I would want to do instead.

Serendipity brought me a career where travel was king and I had the time of my life. I knew it wasn’t my forever job, but it gave me the time and space to stretch my wings and grow beyond anything I ever could have imagined. I loved my team, my job, and the journey we were on. I know the pandemic closed doors I wasn’t quite ready to close, but it paved a path to the fresh start I’d been craving, but was too overwhelmed to tackle. “Nashville, TN” came out as I was trying to decide what to do next. I realized it wasn’t the job, it wasn’t the town, I just needed to let go of my planning and learn to take a leap of faith. I had to be brave enough to stop doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing and start chasing the things I never entertained as real possibilities.

I applied to hundreds of jobs in New York and LA, I was going to do it! I was going to move and start over chasing a new dream in film and tv. I drove down the streets of my hometown thinking about the jobs I was interviewing for and trying to decide where I saw myself in a few years. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine a life as a full time resident of either coast. My life on the road and the helping hands tour I made on my furlough showed me that I am happiest helping others and keeping myself moving. I drove down the streets I learned to drive on and this old gem from my beloved Ally McBeal soundtrack came on shuffle and it hit me. I don’t need to pick a coast. I don’t need to pick another career job. I can do more with less, try things on, and find a new way to be happy.

So I came back from Christmas break, gifted/sold/donated/trashed/packed everything I owned and hit the road again.

I figured out that giving up my house and car left me with minimal bills, I could live on the income my house brought in, and supplement with a part-time job to keep myself traveling and exploring. I stopped looking for career gigs and started looking for fully virtual assignments with a lot of flexibility. I landed on a virtual assistant agency where I bid on the hours I want to work in a week/month and am matched to people that can use the help of crazy organized helpers like myself. I joined a pet and house sitting agency that allows me to pick assignments in places I might want to call home. Friends and family asked me to come help with projects and invited me to stay in their homes. I had the start of a workable plan that would leave me plenty of time to pursue other passions and projects and figure out where to throw my energy. I rented out my house, moved my mementos to storage, and came back to Austin to finish ironing out this crazy gypsy plan of mine.

Had a fabulous staycation for my last night in town. You can’t say goodbye to Nashville without a touristy mural photo. It didn’t hurt that it was across the street from the hotel.

A friend of mine messaged me asking to help her make heads or tails of a box of Vietnamese ingredients she’d been sent. I realized I knew what to make with the contents, but had never made the food myself. It hit me that only my fully Vietnamese cousins could actually make Vietnamese food, the rest of us half kids were clueless. After losing our great grandmother, capturing the legacy, stories, and recipes of our family became important to us all. I figured if I was going home to drop my stuff off anyway, I might as well start by collecting recipes from my loved ones. We all show our love with food and I wanted to preserve it for us.

The escalation of unprovoked hate crimes and violence against the Asian community forced me to come to terms with a great deal of baggage and questions and didn’t even know I had about my cultural identity. While I was here, I might as well dive in and unpack it with the rest of my things.

I thought maybe I would blog a bit about this whole experience. Perhaps a few videos would help with the recipes and sharing tales from this journey. I didn’t know how to tie everything all together to make it easy for people to keep track of these passion projects. I’d gotten tired of the pity and disbelief that I could possibly be happy as a single woman. That somehow a lack of husband or kids would preclude me from a happy and fulfilled life astounded me. I was free to do whatever I wanted, who could possibly be unhappy about that? I started an Instagram called Spoiled Spinster to help me celebrate all of the reasons it was AWESOME to not be tied down. The traditional pursuits would keep me from every part of this journey, and the universe has told me at every turn that this is the right thing for me.

So Spoiled Spinster is where you’ll find all of the passions I’m pursing. My YouTube channel has playlists by category- recipes, reclaiming my race, and now that I’m fully vaccinated- TRAVEL!

I wanted to stay relatively close to home while I waited for my second dose of the vaccine, so I spent quality time with my family, started capturing content and setting up an infrastructure.

Selling my stuff got me thinking- I love hunting and finding vintage and unique treasures. I want to be a part of their story, but I don’t need to be their keeper. I’m not ready to settle down in a new destination and open a brick and mortar, but I wanted to start working towards one. I decided curating a little store of small objects I could easily ship from my suitcase would be an awesome way to keep up the hunt and fund the madness. So Curated Confections was born!

The Round Top Texas Annual Antique Fair has been on my wishlist for a couple of years, but I’ve never made it back in time. I knew my beloved bluebonnets would be plentiful in that tiny town halfway between Austin and Houston, so I decided to make a little field trip and I fell in love.

While roaming the stalls and meeting the incredible vendors, I picked up a custom hat and got inspired to collect vintage pieces to build hat clips and accessories. The High Hat Collection is where you’ll find vintage hat pins, broaches, buttons, feathers and other customizable millinery accessories.

It’s a lot, and while I know what to do in theory, the execution is a bit trickier than I anticipated. I hope you’ll bear with me as I find my feet and kick off this portion of the adventure. There is so much I want to share with you, and it’s all starting to come together. I hope you’ll join me on this adventure. I know I’ll be alone for most of it, but it sure helps knowing you’re there with me!

Cheers,

Lyss