My King-Size Daydream

Howdy y’all!

First & foremost, CAN YOU EVEN with the new Brightsiding logo?! I’ve been working with Daniela at Lunaria Studio over the past few months on a Brightside glow-up, and as a woman of MANY words — I am struggling to find the right language to express my absolute obsession with the new brand direction. Next, we’re going to be updating my website and I can’t WAIT to show y’all what Daniela and her team have been cooking up. When I saw the preview I almost dropped dead.

In my world, things have been busy. I’m thrilled it’s October because in two weeks, I head to PARIS (for the first time ever!!!) with two of my best gals. I love this season and I’m excited to experience it in a new city. Here’s hoping the bed-bug situation is resolved by then …

I’m also beyond excited about my latest venture … PODCASTING. I’ve basically turned my apartment into a recording studio and I’ve been having a ton of fun experimenting with my cousin Meaghan. I’m learning everything as I go - I joke that I’m getting my MFA in Audio Engineering from YouTube - and trying to embrace being a beginner at something so complex. As soon as we get the first episode up on Spotify, you know I’ll be sharing it!

Hope everyone’s doing great as we settle into the fall season. Today I’m here with a reflection on one of my most audacious childhood daydreams … and how it all came to fruition in the most serendipitous way possible.

Love you, mean it ❤️ 

When I was about 9 or 10 years old, one night before bed, I told my mom how one day I’d have a huge, king-sized bed to call my own.

The origins of this specific fantasy are to-date, unknown, yet it still trickled into my consciousness.. I was a tiny kid - so my twin-sized bed provided me more than enough comfort. I have to assume that at that age, a huge bed sounded like a luxury, a la Eloise at the Plaza Despite my modest, rural Connecticut upbringing, I’ve always had an affinity for luxury.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time alone in my own head, wondering about the life I’d lead when I “broke out” of my small town. My dreams have always been big - and my king-sized daydream was a result of time spent imagining my future home--a space to live out my whimsy and call my own (a favorite topic in my daydream rotation even to this day).

The content I was consuming then fueled the vision, too. The only thing within walking distance of my childhood home was a public library, and I spent a lot of time there reading everything I could get my hands on. Young Adult novels, books about American consumerism, magazines, you name it. The library stoked the fire of my imagination and illuminated the worlds I built in my head.

When I told my mom about my king-bed daydream, she responded, without a beat, in her ever-pragmatic way: “the bigger the bed, the more expensive the sheets.” She was never one to quite indulge my fantasies. She was a self-proclaimed realist, and, as a result, had a habit of trying to ground me in reality.

Luckily for me (and much to the chagrin of my mother), my imagination was already too unruly to be tamed by such a quick remark. If anything, it gave me fuel. She’ll see, I thought. It’ll happen.

When I first moved to New York, it did not happen. In my first apartment I had a wrought-iron twin-size trundle bed, which served as a hilarious conduit to more sleepovers than I can count. It was so funny getting home drunk and pulling out the trundle bed for someone to crash on. I used my first agency paycheck to deck it out with bedding from PB Teen that I’d been coveting since flipping through the catalogs in my childhood bedroom, and it really was adorable. My room faced an inner courtyard in Bushwick (OKAY, it was Ridgewood), but to me it was like the freakin’ Plaza.

The trundle bed followed me to the next few apartments, surviving flex-style walls that didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling, out-of-control parties, and an era where I was truly only ever home to stumble into it exhausted after the adventures of the day.

Then, when I moved in with a boyfriend - I ditched the trundle and bought a stupid expensive queen-size mattress that I ended up forfeiting during the breakup. Suddenly, I found myself back in the same twin bed I’d slept in as a child, staring out the window and wondering what the fuck was happening with my life. It wasn’t existential dread, exactly - if anything it was existential excitement. I knew I’d unlocked a major level for myself in leaving a relationship that wasn’t right for me. But I was lost, and my king-bed daydream seemed further away than ever.

I knew if I wanted to move back to New York, a king-size bed was pretty unrealistic, considering most of the apartments I’d be able to afford now that I was on my own were tiny. I started to consider moving to other cities like Austin or LA - and by then, furniture seemed like an afterthought compared to more burning questions like, would I have to find a new job? Start completely from scratch? Was I willing to leave all my friends behind?

After a few months of living at home, going to sleep with no idea what the future held, I went to see my mentor/fairy godmother, Helen, in the Hudson Valley. Within 20 minutes and very little context she turned to me and said - I have an apartment for you in the Lower East side. And the first thing she mentioned? It comes furnished with a king-size bed. (GASP!)

Before I knew it, I was moving into the apartment, making the bed with a fresh set of sheets like I’d dreamt about as a little kid.

I go to sleep every night with more room than I could ever need. Sometimes I take up just a tiny sliver, other times I find myself in the middle of the ocean, tangled up in a gorgeous blue quilt, surrounded by gorgeous hand-dyed silk pillowcases, linen sheets, caught up in my dreams… literally and figuratively.

The point? Don’t listen to your mom ( 😉 ), and never stop dreaming those king-size daydreams.