I’ve never been one to share too much online. I purged my thousands of Facebook friends years ago, limiting it to my fifteen or so closest friends. I have Instagram, but it’s private and I don’t share too much there. Every once in a while I’ll post on LinkedIn, always something professional in nature. But lately, I’ve come to realize that having an “online presence” is increasingly important for the kinds of projects I hope to see succeed.
Okay, but even if I did decide to share more stuff, who would find me interesting? Well, I guess we’ll find out with this post.
So, who am I?
First and foremost, as of December 2022, I’m a mom. As of this writing, I have two amazing children: Arrow, 2, and Rumi, 8 months. They have exceeded my most beautiful dreams about having children. This is definitely the most prominent layer in my ever-changing identity.
I’m a wife. My partner and I met in February 2017 and got married five months later. “When you know, you know” was definitely true for me. I had been in a five year-relationship just prior to meeting him, and was engaged for two of those years. But I had entered into that relationship not thinking long-term about what I really wanted or needed in a partner. We got along great and we loved each other, and so engagement and marriage were the next logical steps. But as the wedding date drew nearer (maybe prompted by having my bachelorette party), I questioned if I was picking the right person for a—ideally—life-long commitment. And ultimately I decided no, there were other qualities I needed in someone who was going to be my partner and potentially the father of my children. Happy to share more about that whole time of my life, including moving out of his parents’ home where we were living, getting my own apartment, the stress of the breakup that led to alopecia and totaling my car…
Anyway. My parents separated when I was thirteen and finalized their divorce soon after. That really shaped me. I wanted to find someone that was a really good fit for me–someone I could be 100% myself with, but also someone who would be a true partner in tackling life’s challenges together. A problem-solver whose perspective I respected and vice-versa. That’s my husband. He is intelligent, articulate, caring, and 100% reliable. I trust him more than anyone in the world. And he’s the best father in the entire world. He can also be a real jerk sometimes (not to our kids—he has unlimited patience with them), but so can I. Oh gosh, we sometimes butt heads like rams. Maybe once or twice, I’ve felt like we may not last. But over the eight years we’ve been together, we’ve learned how to fight and how to de-escalate. And we make an effort to stay connected outside the crazy world of rearing children that we’ve plunged into together. I know 50% of marriages end in divorce, but I really feel like we’ll be together til the end. I just hope I don’t survive decades after him. (I think about death a lot. Gotta stop doing that.)
I love working. To me, “working” means doing things that make money and/or add value to society. I have a full-time job as a learning strategist at Applied Materials that I love, I’m a REALTOR®, I’ve written a statistics textbook, have made several online courses on topics I’m excited about, and I’ve written a memoir about my days playing competitive chess and partying with grandmasters that I’m trying to get published (this is one of the projects for which I apparently need more of an online presence). “Working” to me also includes financial planning, tax preparation, and investing. I started investing in the stock market as soon as I paid off my $75,000 student loans in 2013 and had extra money. In 2016 I was able to afford a down payment on a duplex, and henceforth I’ve been investing in real estate. (See “How I Became a Real Estate Investor and How You Can Too.”) I’ve remodeled my properties, rented them out, refinanced, and then made a course about it. I’m amazed at how many people have never invested in the stock market because they’re scared. I try to convince anyone who will listen that they are seriously losing out by only keeping their money in a regular savings account, and I started a Meetup group to help other women learn how to invest.
Along those lines, I like people, and I love helping others in whatever way I can. Throughout my youth and into college, I tutored. Mostly math, but also chess, English, biology, and even cursive. Helping my pupils have those lightbulb moments was so rewarding, and this love of education set the foundation for my career. I’m always trying to figure out other ways I can give to my community without stretching myself too thin, and within my inner circles I’m always the one friends can count on to be a sounding board and share any thoughts or advice that may be helpful. I’m always happy to share anything I can with complete strangers as well, though given I’m in mom mode and don’t really venture out of my bubble too much these days, I don’t meet many new people. Maybe this blog will turn into an avenue where I can help more people.
Not to say that I’m, like, so full of wisdom or whatever. I know a decent amount about a few things that I’ve found incredibly useful in my life. So whatever info I can share that’s useful to others, I’m happy to.
A lot of people would consider me to be “smart.” People would tell me this all the time growing up. “You’re so smart” and “You’re the smartest person I know.” And yeah, being “smart” has definitely been baked into my identity. But I do believe that there are all kinds of ways to be smart. I was booksmart: I took calculus in ninth grade and college math classes throughout high school, graduated cum laude, went to Stanford. I’ve learned that being booksmart is very useful for many things, but it’s a different kind of “smart” that enables a happy life. A life where you enjoy each day, have control over your schedule; where you have the right partner and are able to do the things you love. I’m happy to say that I do feel like I have been able to make the right decisions that have led me to the life I’m living now.
Then again, I’ve had a fair dose of luck. You can’t underestimate the power of good luck. I’ve never been abused. I’ve never had a terrible health issue or an incapacitating freak accident. I had supportive parents and a good education. Every day I am grateful for my physical and mental health that allows me to do everything I’m doing–most of all, to be a good mom.
I have a wild side. (Good luck also helped me survive in certain situations I put myself in.) I’m in mom mode right now so Wild Katie is sorta hibernating (I did go out for girls night cocktails and didn’t get to bed until the wee hour of 11pm) but she’s gonna come out like the Roaring 20’s after breastfeeding is done and both kids are old enough to stay the night at my parents’. All my hobbies involve a heavy dose of adrenaline: snowboarding, surfing, aerial silks, rock climbing. Six weeks after having Rumi, I started a gymnastics class at the University of Utah and now I can do front handsprings (they’re pretty ugly front handsprings, but I would still consider them front handsprings). I love traveling, having totally weird and different experiences (I’ve been to Burning Man four times), meeting new people, gaining new perspectives, and being challenged. I live for adventure.
There was music playing in the background, Nevermind by Dennis Lloyd, but YouTube made me remove it.
I guess the one last thing about who I am would be to cover where I’m going. And to be honest, I don’t know. I’m just living life, one small person out of over 8 billion people. I don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I will die one day and most likely no one will remember me or reference anything I’ve done. And I’m totally fine with that. In the meantime, feel free to stay tuned for the mundane things I’m working on in this life, if you’re interested.
For one thing, I’m selling my first house. It’s the house I bought when we moved back to Salt Lake City from the Bay Area in September 2023. I remodeled it, landscaped, and loved it so much, but then Rumi came along and I decided we needed more space. So during my maternity leave, I bought our current home, renovated it, moved into it, and put our old house on the market. In the meantime, I’ve been Airbnb’ing it to cover the mortgage, and it’s been quite successful. I’ve made an average of $3,420 per month which covers my $2,830 mortgage and utilities. I did spend around $1000 for supplies, so all-in-all I broke even with the Airbnb. I hate Airbnb’ing though, honestly. I’ve become a common maid, just cleaning up after guests and washing sheets. Plus, STRs (short-term rentals, i.e., for periods of less than 30 days) are illegal and the city has caught on. I came back from Mexico last week to find a notice taped to my door saying they’ll charge $200 per day. Fortunately, my transaction is set to close on March 31, so hopefully it goes through and I can be done Airbnb’ing! If it doesn’t go through for some reason (though, it should since we passed the due diligence deadline and the buyers’ financing looks on track), I’ll just focus on finding long-term tenants and wait to sell my house after interest rates have dropped a bit more…hopefully next year.
Honestly, I feel like STRs should be allowed while people are trying to sell their homes. I have a neighbor whose house has been sitting empty for over a year! What does the city expect sellers to do–sign a year-long lease with a tenant and then three months later tell them, “Well, I found a buyer, so you have to move out now.” That would be a shitty thing to do to someone, which is why I went the STR route. The alternative is to just suck it up and pay two mortgages, or wait to sell your house until after you find your new one. But that can get really tricky and lots of things can go wrong. Anyway, I think I will present this STR proposal to the city and see what they say. So stay tuned on that.
And then there’s my memoir, tentatively titled Adventures of a Chess Girl: Thriving and Surviving in the World of Chess. I wrote a first draft back in 2020, but it was complete shit, so I hired a professional editor to provide feedback. He gave great feedback, and so I spent my first maternity leave rewriting the entire thing. I had a decent draft by the end, and my editor gave me an A- and provided more feedback for improvement. So I started querying, and in the meantime I polished it again. I actually found an interested agent quite quickly, and I signed immediately. But, over the next year and a half, she gave me the runaround. She had me write a book proposal, which was fine, but when I would submit it to her she would say things like, “The synopsis doesn’t quite work as-is.” Not much to go off of there. She made me purchase her book on how to write a book proposal, which was fine because it was only $5. And then she linked me with this random woman to help me more with the proposal. I spent hours with this woman on the phone helping her understand more about the memoir so that she could write a good synopsis. And even then, what she wrote wasn’t quite accurate or didn’t reflect the story. I feel like AI can now do better and faster what this woman did. Anyway, we never closed the loop on the book proposal. I never heard back after providing my feedback; the woman, and my agent, just dropped off the face of the earth. In the meantime I continued polishing the story and checking in with my agent every once in a while to ask if and when she was going to pitch it to publishers, and long story short she never even tried pitching it. When I told her I decided I needed an agent who would be a true advocate for the book, she said, “Sorry we couldn’t get more interest.” Well duh, if you’re not going to pitch it at all, of course we won’t get interest… the whole publishing world is quite opaque to me. Is this normal agent behavior? So anyway, I’m querying again and have gotten a bunch of rejections so far, which is to be expected. Just gotta keep at it. I feel like finding an agent is a numbers game. Like dating. You have to date a whole bunch of people until you find one that’s a great fit.
And then I have a work training coming up in April that I’m planning to bring Rumi to because I’m still breastfeeding. I found a babysitter on Care.com and reserved a room near where the training will be held where they can hang out. I currently breastfeed Rumi four times per day and I’m guessing it’ll be about the same next month when I go to this training. So I’ll just pop on over when I normally feed her. The thing is, I don’t want to pump and have someone else bottle-feed her. She’s used to having that special time with me four times a day–most importantly, first thing when she wakes every morning and last thing before she goes to sleep. I could leave her at home with my husband, but I just don’t want to. I would rather pay the $270 per day for the babysitter so that she has that continuity. One day she will wean, but until then, I’m not going to spend a single night away from her. I recognize I’m in a privileged position to be able to do this. I chose with both my children that they would stay at home with me for a year before starting day care. And I’ve been able to do that since I work from home. Most working moms need to put their baby in daycare at three months, sometimes even six weeks! That’s just crazy to me. In an ideal world, a mom can decide how she wants to feed her baby. If she wants to exclusively breastfeed, exclusively pump, do a combination, or feed her baby formula, that should be up to her. But we’re far from a perfect world. I’m grateful to have a life that aligns with my preferences.
At some point I will probably want a third kid. Rumi and Arrow are only 19 months apart, and I love it. I never thought in a million years, prior to having kids and after having Arrow, that I would want a second one so close in age. But now that it happened (yes, Rumi was an accident lol—don’t trust the fertility apps!), it’s so great! And I kinda want a third kid to also be close in age. But I do want a bit more of a gap this time—I felt like I barely got back into shape and into a new swing of things before I got pregnant again. That aerial silks video is from September 2023, when Arrow was 9 months old. And then I got pregnant the following month! I snowboarded into February, until I got scared that taking a fall would dislodge my placenta. I don’t really fall, but you never know if something or someone will trip you. Not worth the risk. So yeah, I think I’ll wait til Rumi is around 2, then my husband and I will decide if we want to go for it.
So, that’s what’s going on in my little world. Tomorrow is Friday. I have a restorative yoga class in the morning, and then I’m planning to get a shit ton of work done. At some point this weekend I have to document all my rental business expenses, clean my Airbnb in preparation for the next guest, attempt to convince the civil enforcement officer to let me STR until the end of the month and not fine me, and meet the buyers to show them how to open the front door (it’s a little tricky, lol). And I want to get dosas for breakfast, maybe on Saturday since we’ll go to my mom’s and stepfather’s for Sunday dinner. That’s a typical weekend.
I swear I could keep talking, but it’s probably best if I end here now that you have an overview of me and my life. I’m an open book (well, maybe there are a few pages with invisible ink) so if there’s anything you wanna know more about, feel free to leave a comment and maybe I’ll turn that into my next blog post. Cheers! 🥂