Introducing ‘Notes from a Sonoma Homebody’

There's a version of me from not that long ago who made things constantly.

She sewed. Really sewed. She took photos. She spent late nights in a craft room with her friends making something out of nothing. She just made things because making things felt natural. Because it was who she was.

My mom always said I had my grandma's genes. That anything crafty just came to me. I believed her, because it felt true. My hands knew what to do before my brain caught up.

I'm not sure exactly when that person left. That's the thing about losing something slowly. You don't notice it going. You just wake up one day and realize the sewing machine hasn't moved in months, the camera is buried under a pile of things you meant to deal with, and the last creative thing you made was a grocery list.

Somewhere along the way, I lost that piece of myself. The creative one.

This is me trying to get it back.

What this is really about…

I've spent a lot of time in the last six months sitting with an uncomfortable question: who am I if I'm not my job?

After college, so much of my identity got quietly absorbed into work. My personality, my sense of purpose, my answer to the question everyone asks at every gathering. What do you do? And for a long time I had a good answer, and it felt like enough. It felt like me.

Then the job ended. And I found myself, for the first time in my adult life, without that anchor. Six months of job hunting. Six months of applications and Zoom calls and the particular exhaustion of performing competence for strangers while privately wondering if you're falling behind some invisible timeline.

But the harder thing, the thing I didn't expect, was realizing how much of my identity had been built on work alone. How little I had held onto of myself that existed outside of it. Life isn't your job. I knew that intellectually. I didn't know it in my body until my job was gone.

The happiest version of me was always the creative one. The one who made things with her hands. The one who spent a Tuesday night at a craft table with people she loved and felt completely, quietly herself.

I want to find her again. I think writing is part of how I get there.

What this is

Notes from a Sonoma Homebody is a series I'm starting, here on the blog and over on Instagram and TikTok, that's essentially what it sounds like. Notes. From someone who lives in Sonoma, California, who is by nature and by choice a homebody, and who has a lot of thoughts she's historically kept to herself.

I want to be clear about what this isn't: it's not a lifestyle brand. It's not a content strategy dressed up as a personal project. It's not curated in the way that word usually means online, where everything is softened and prettied and stripped of anything uncomfortable.

What it is, I hope, is honest. A collection of notes on living slowly in a beautiful place. On finding your way back to yourself. On farmers markets and sewing projects and the specific quality of morning light in wine country. On job hunting and the quiet exhaustion of in-between chapters. On being a person who finds more meaning in an ordinary Saturday than in a perfectly planned one.

I've always found it easier to keep things to myself. Writing felt too exposed, too presumptuous. Who was I to think anyone would want to read what I had to say? But I've been sitting with that question lately and I think the honest answer is: maybe no one. And that's okay. I'm starting this for me first. If it finds you and something here feels worth staying for, I'm genuinely glad.

Why Sonoma

Because it's where I live, and because living somewhere beautiful doesn't mean you experience it any less ordinarily.

People come to Sonoma on vacation. They come for the wineries and the food and the golden hills and the kind of afternoon light that makes everything look like it was photographed by someone who knows what they're doing. I live here, which means I also drive to Costco through the vineyards, get stuck behind trucks carying wine on the highway, and buy my groceries at the same marketing I've been going to for years.

Both things are true. It's extraordinary and it's ordinary and I find both versions worth writing about.

There's also something about this particular place that lends itself to slowness. The fog that comes in low at night. The way the hills go green almost overnight in early spring. The farmers market on Saturday morning that I go to every week whether I need anything or not, because I always come back with something I didn't know I needed.

Sonoma has been quietly teaching me to pay attention. I'm finally starting to listen.

Why now

Because I almost didn't.

I've started and stopped versions of this more times than I'd like to admit. A blog I never published. An Instagram I posted to twice and abandoned. Notes in my phone that never made it anywhere. Each time I talked myself out of it before it began. Too self-indulgent, too niche, not polished enough, not ready yet.

I've decided I'm done waiting to be ready.

The sewing machine is back out. The camera is charged. The notes app on my phone is full of half-finished thoughts that deserve more than a private folder. And I'm at a point in my life, in the middle of a quiet chapter, job hunting, recalibrating, where making things feels less like a hobby and more like a necessity.

So this is it. Imperfect and in progress and entirely okay with both of those things.

What's coming

The series will live in two places. These longer essays here on the blog, and shorter carousel notes over on Instagram and Tik Tok at @taylorofcalifornia. They're related but not identical. The Instagram is the thought. The blog is where the thought gets to breathe.

I'll be writing about slow mornings and what they've taught me about the rhythm of a day. About the farmers market as a ritual rather than an errand. About picking up a sewing machine after years away and what it felt like when my hands remembered what my brain had half-forgotten. About wine country as a place to actually live in, not just visit. About the job hunt and staying sane and keeping hopeful in the in-between. About building an identity that isn't propped up by a title on a LinkedIn page.

And probably other things I haven't thought of yet. That's the point of notes. They go where they go.

A note on this space

This blog doesn't have a comment section yet, and I'm still figuring out what I want it to be. For now it's simple: a place to write things down. If something here resonates with you, Instagram is the easiest place to find me.

And if you're here because you found the carousel and followed the link: thank you. Truly. The fact that something I almost didn't post found its way to you is not lost on me.

More notes to come & with love,

Taylor

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Notes from a Sonoma Homebody publishes weekly. Find the companion series on Instagram and Tik Tok at @taylorofcalifornia.