Kept Notes · The story behind the name

Years ago, I was working the front desk at an investment firm.

It was one of those jobs with stretches of time when there simply wasn’t much happening. I kept a little notepad tucked into my pocketbook, and when things got quiet, I found myself filling its pages with ideas.

Things I wanted to make. Things I wanted to try. Thoughts I didn’t want to lose. Little plans for making life feel more interesting.

One day, somewhere in all that scribbling, I started thinking about the words housekeeping and bookkeeping.

Both were about things you keep on top of.

And I wondered: what would you call the practice of keeping on top of your own contentment?

Not happiness in the big, sweeping sense. Not chasing some ideal version of life where every day is exciting and beautiful and meaningful.

I was sitting at a front desk on a monotonous workday, after all.

What I was searching for was something much smaller: the ability to fully enjoy the life I was actually in. To notice what was good while it was happening. To find things to be curious about, look forward to, make, appreciate, and enjoy — even on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday.

And that’s when the word came to me:

Blisskeeping.

The practice of keeping blissfully content.

I loved it enough to write it down.

And apparently, I loved it enough to keep it.

Years later…

The word has followed me through different seasons of my life, and its meaning has grown with me.

These days, I don’t think blisskeeping means trying to stay blissful all the time. Life doesn’t work that way, and I wouldn’t want to turn contentment into another thing to achieve perfectly.

I think of it more as a practice of tending.

Tending to the place I call home.

Tending to myself.

Tending to the interests and creative pursuits that make me feel curious and alive.

And, maybe most importantly, paying enough attention to notice what’s already here.

That’s what I want this little corner of the internet to hold.

You’ll find notes about Home Life — the projects, routines, systems, objects, meals, and small details that make home feel like home.

There will be Self-Care — Pilates and movement, rituals and routines, beauty, rest, and the ways I’m learning to take care of myself.

And there will be Creative Pursuits — things I’m making, learning, experimenting with, wondering about, and following simply because something about them caught my attention.

Some of it may be useful to someone else.

Some of it may only matter to me.

That’s okay.

I’m not building Blisskeeping because I have a perfectly curated life to present or because I’ve figured out the secret to contentment.

Quite the opposite.

I want somewhere to document the practice of it.

A place for the ideas that might once have ended up scribbled in that little pocketbook notepad. A place for photographs and projects and discoveries. A place to remember what I was making, learning, noticing, and enjoying in a particular season of my life.

An atelier, in other words.

A little atelier for a life in progress.

It’s funny to think that all these years later, a word I invented to entertain myself during a quiet day at the front desk would finally have a place of its own.

But I suppose that’s rather fitting.

I kept it.

And now, I’m ready to see what else is worth keeping.

Kept because

Because sometimes an idea scribbled into a little notepad on an ordinary workday turns out to be something you carry with you for years.

Blisskeeping started as a word for the kind of contentment I was searching for then. Today, it’s becoming a place to practice it — by paying attention to my home, caring for myself, following my curiosity, and keeping a record of the small things that make a life feel like your own.

Filed under: Kept Notes · Home Life · Self-Care · Creative Pursuits