Rory Gilmore or how I lied in a recent post

and some changes at Born of Wonder

I was thinking about something I wrote in a post and I realized it was a complete lie.

This is what I wrote:

“I don’t want to miss a single moment lost in a life that isn’t mine.”

I wrote those words in “Deleting Social Media: One Year Later,” a little update on my off-legacy-social media life and while I know what I was trying to say (essentially that I do not need to be scroll-stalking an acquaintance or influencer for hours in the evening), as a stand-alone statement I’ve realized it is just 100% not true.

You see, I’ve spent the last week or so totally immersed in the books of Madeleine L’Engle¹, a long-time favorite author of mine who is finding me again just when I need her in this season of life. I think so often of L’Engle in her “tired thirties,”² so glad to have found a compatriot in this chaotic season of children and work, trying to carve out a creative life.

I have thought so often of Mrs. Murry making hot chocolate with her bunsen burner and how worried she must have been with her husband out lost among the stars, about how she still managed a smile tucking her children in at night. I have thought of Meg Murry/O’Keefe - how an awkward mouse-brown haired teen with a big, brave heart went on to become a confident, happy mother of seven.

And I have thought of L’Engle herself³, ambling around a creaking old New England house, falling asleep at her typewriter, juggling children, hoping to get published, listening to records, taking walks in the crisp woods.

I love these women and I love getting lost in their lives. In their profundity and their humanity and in their hope and their heart and their complexity, I find rest and a sense of friendship. I also am able to look at my own life anew, convicted and inspired. It also gives me a sense of possibility. Look, Mrs. Murry could win the Noble Prize and raise four children. I can do anything.

Getting lost in other’s lives is actually something I want to do a whole lot of.

It’s getting to be that 'new school year’ time of year. I can feel it in my bones. I was always incredibly excited to get my school supply list - a trip to Office Depot and a whole set of clean, crisp folders and marble composition books. Possibility.

And there’s something in me that gets giddy in August. Just one more month - one more hot, bleary, muggy month until the seasons start to shift and cool and I grab a sweater and some tea and breathe deep, flipping the pages of a dusty paperback.

I need new years so badly. I need fresh starts and clean slates and the start of a new school year is just that for me - even still today, with no classes lined up.

Or aren’t there?

Classes in patience and humility and balance and writing and listening. Certainly, yes. Watch me launch into a cliche about the school of life here, but the older I get, the more I’m okay with cliches and tropes and even a little sentimentality.

So I think you can be a student no matter how old you are. Actually, I think you should be a student. I think you should make a supply list and a book list and a set of goals and get ready for a new year and a fresh start.

Speaking of other’s lives, this is the time of year I turn on Gilmore Girls, my comfort show of all comfort shows, flawed and funny and safe. And I think of Rory Gilmore in a plaid uniform unapologetically reading and sipping coffee and I want that life!

Rory Gilmore makes me feel nostalgic. I was an insufferable teenager carrying around Swann’s Way and making snarky comments and really thinking I’d move to Europe and smoke pink elephants and write books like Hemingway. I really thought that.

I could laugh that off or I could actually start to get excited about books and art and imagine whole worlds again. I could remember the way it feels when you’re sixteen and you want to fall in love and want to travel and you want, want, want. Because it’s good to want, and hope, and aspire to things.

She’s really happy reading Joan Didion… Is she okay?

So I’m taking this New School Year energy as a moment to evaluate what I’m doing here on Born of Wonder.

I started Born of Wonder as a blog and Instagram page in 2019 (wow it really was that long ago!). I had quit my job and I wanted to have a baby and didn’t have a baby yet. We had moved to a small farm we had no idea how to take care of. I was failing in the garden and itching with unspent creativity.

Then I went to the Cathedral of Mary our Queen on the feast of St. Gregory the Great and read this quote —

“We make idols of our concepts but Wisdom is Born of Wonder.”

And I realized that was it. That was the point. I wanted to listen to symphonies and read novels and hike mountains and watch movies and drink wine and feel that sense of possibility. Wisdom - hidden in the wonder of the world.

So the podcast and the blog and everything else followed. It was always a passion project, though it gave me incredible opportunities, to interview authors and intellectuals and fellow parents and many people I admired from afar. It connected me to like-minded people and gave me a platform for various projects, or even a pilgrimage abroad.

All this amidst the chaos of parenthood. Yes, the baby did eventually come, and then another not too far behind. Two little girls who wondrously immersed me in the world.

This past year my husband and I made some big changes in the structure of our days and the way we live. We have this radical, still-in-the-works vision of two working parents with flexible schedules and basically what this vision means is that Born of Wonder, these paid subscribers, could be a not-unimportant aspect of that lifestyle we’re working towards.

I’ve shied away from paid subscriptions before. I did paid posts, but was always confused about what posts should be paywalled, which ones shouldn’t, and can anything you love really ever involve money anyway? I’ve thought through this a lot.

To be totally transparent (I always appreciate behind the scenes on numbers, etc.), though I gained quite a few general subscribers (this publication is nearing 2k), in my back-and-forth angst over paid subscriptions, I did lose a lot of paid subscribers - I went from 90 some to 60 some in a few short months. I realized I needed a plan and a vision.

So I’ve decided to offer subscribers, of all tiers, as well as myself, some clarity.

A la New School Year Energy.

Born of Wonder will have a paid subscription option for $5 a month.

This paid subscription will get you the following (which I will truly treat like my job in my consistency):

— One ‘inspirational’ character profile a month (a la Mrs. Murry, Jo March, etc. as well as real-life historical figures, a la Audrey Hepburn, etc.)

— One author profile a month, with a recommended reading list

— One paid subscriber essay every other month (likely essays involving more ‘controversial’ issues or personal matters)

— I will also start paywalling a majority of posts after 2 weeks so a paid subscription will give you full access to the archives.

And there you have it! That’s the plan. I’m putting it in my Marble Composition Notebook, neatly organized on my desk next to my newly sharpened pencils. And believe me dear readers, “I would send you a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address!”⁴

If you’d like to sign up now and get a discount, you have until September 1st to sign up for a yearly subscription for 20% off.

Joan Didion to Sylvia Plath… My kind of reading list! A little less giddy for Plath than Didion though it seems.

I’ve gone against all algorithm and marketing advice by writing a really long winding email and putting the paid subscription option at the very end when the statistics say that no one reads past the first couple paragraphs anyway.

But like I wrote recently, I’m sick and tired of relying on depressing statistics.

I don’t think life is terrible. I think it’s beautiful and marvelous and wonderful.

And I think you all read and care and that belief, that proof, of so many engaged and thoughtful people in the world has seen me through more than I can say.

So sincerely, thank you, and cheers to the New School Year.⁵

(Don’t mind me, I’m just going to go decorate my planner in Lisa Frank stickers.)

Most importantly - do you hate Dean or why don’t you hate Dean? But this was cute. Cuter if he actually read the books with her though.

Cheers x

Katie

Come to Ireland with me in October 2024!!!! Yes there’s still time!

Listen to Born of Wonder the podcast

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Email me anytime: marquettekatie@gmail.com

1. You can listen to the podcast (the first ep. of season 8!) I recently released about her here.

2. “I was always tired.  So was Hugh.  During the decade between thirty and forty, most couples are raising small children, and we were no exception.  Hugh was struggling to support his growing family in the strange world outside the theatre.  And there was I, absolutely stuck in bucology, with the washing machine freezing at least once a week, the kitchen never above 55* when the wind blew from the northwest, not able to write until after my little ones were in bed, by which time I was so tired that I often quite literally fell asleep with my head on the typewriter."“ — Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

3. L’Engle romanticized her life incredibly in her nonfiction, much to the occasional irritation and disappointment of her children, but nevertheless.

4. We recently discovered a sheet of paper where we had listed about 20-30 You’ve Got Mail quotes to put on various merch for a pop up shop or Etsy Store - maybe that will be our next income stream xD Huge, right!!

5. Feel free to share your ‘new school year’ plans and goals in the comments! Or tell me if you’re Team Dean, Logan, or Jess :))