Sharing my word for 2024

…but am I brave enough for the adventures I have planned?

This photograph may give you a clue!

Hello, and welcome to the home of The Tiny Department Store. Here you will find my weekly newsletter where I share the behind the scenes of setting up a small business and working towards making my dream of opening a concept store a reality. Without premises or a large budget I have created possibly the world’s tiniest department store, measuring just the dimensions of the wooden box on the front of my shiny blue bicycle. The Tiny Department Store will pop up once a month with a new theme and a limited edition range of products that constantly evolve. I will also give you a peek inside my world, sharing snippets of my daily life, travels and inspirations. I would love you to join me on this journey.

I wrote to you last week about my LOVE of choosing a word for the year. I know there are many skeptics, and I include dear friends and indeed my husband in this camp, but I unapologetically love both the process and the outcome. I like to imagine my word as a weatherworn lighthouse, shining through the fog, gently guiding me in the right direction. Admittedly it does depend on the word that you select, the year I went for Consistency for example, the voice in my head felt more like a stern teacher than an encouraging friend, but I found last year’s word Action both empowering and motivating.

I took myself off for a solo coffee date to come up with some contenders for my word for 2024. I considered Brave as I am not brave and find it very hard to be brave. I hate making phone calls, driving in the dark and many, many more things. Yet this didn’t quite sit with me. I also thought about Community as I love to feel part of the community I live in and also within the wider creative community, but it didn’t feel expansive enough. Sitting quietly and reading through the pages of jumbled thoughts in my notebook, I saw that I had written one word over and over. Collaborate. Without any further thought, I knew this was the word that I needed to guide me this year.

If I’m not at my kitchen table, you will find me at my favourite coffee shop Longway with a mocha and my notebook

In all honesty 2023 was quite a lonely year for me. In taking action to make progress with my big shiny dream of launching The Tiny Department Store, it meant lots of doing. Doing for me is making, so most of my week would be spent at my kitchen table by myself, molding clay into families of pebble people and mixing paints to create my chosen colour palette. Lining the finished ceramics in neat rows to add layers of glossy varnish, before finishing with their trade mark wide set eyes and cheerful smiles. I stitched great hanks of rope into stacks of baskets, and turned my collection of vintage fabrics into hair ties. I collaged dozens of cards, made flower crowns and leaf garlands, crocheted wreathes and as Christmas approached typed festive fortunes onto tiny slips of paper to be tucked inside brown paper stars, alongside button badges and chocolates. I absolutely love making, it is my happy place but I have also begun to feel a little isolated. A tiny row boat out in a vast ocean, coming to shore fleetingly for a coffee with my laptop or a monthly pop-up and then going back out to sea all alone.

My lovely but sometimes lonely creative space

As I wrote the word Collaborate on a fresh crisp page in my notebook, it made me feel nervous but also hopeful. It felt spacious and full of possibility. I also wrote down the words community, connect and courage and realised that Collaboration was the weft that could weave these words together. To collaborate I would need courage to connect and with meaningful connections would come a greater sense of the community that I craved. It really felt like the perfect word to address my feelings of loneliness and in doing so would push me outside of my comfort zone and help me to grow.

The next step was to dare to dream of the creative ways that I could collaborate and I pushed myself to think big. Who would I most like to work with? Where would be the dreamiest places to pop-up? What could The Tiny Department Store become? I spent several hours pouring my dreams into my notebook, allowing them to tumble out without censorship. I then closed my book and walked home, clutching my book full dreams to my chest like treasure.

As I processed my morning, I thought back to last year’s word Action and all that I had learnt. It was important that I didn’t become too dreamy, so when I got home I distilled the essence of my jumbled thoughts into an actionable list. I thought through the timelines and practicalities and now have a six month plan that feels bold yet achievable. This is where the courage comes in, there is so much safety to be found within the confines of a notebook, but nothing will grow unless these seeds are planted and tended to.

I recently stumbled across the talented designer and writer

Sarah Robertson

and was particularly inspired by her month long challenge to embrace rejection. Sarah writes about the sting of rejection and finding the grit to choose courage over comfort. I won’t spoil the ending of her experiment and would highly encourage you to dig into her wonderful writing, you won’t fail to be inspired. I am wondering about trying a similar approach and if so, perhaps I should share my collaboration dreams here to both keep myself accountable, but also to offer encouragement for you to try something similar. Any thoughts?

Anyway, I will leave things here and will be back in your inbox next week. Some things I have in the pipeline are more Love Lists, these fell by the wayside last year but I loved writing them and had some great feedback. I also want to write a post about my wonderful home town of San Anselmo and to share with you my very favourite places. So many good things coming!

Wishing you all a wonderful day! Please click on the 🫶 if you are enjoying reading these letters and share any thoughts that you might have. You guys really are a huge part of my creative community and I appreciate you being here.

Kate x