It was the Fall of 2017. Exactly one year after I had been booted off of my safe and “sensible” career path and into the unknown. We had just sold our first newlywed home, due to the aforementioned job loss, and had moved into a small apartment overlooking San Antonio’s historic Pearl district (from where I still sit as I write this, and from were I co-birthed this magazine last year).

Like a child with a burning curiosity for something they’ve been told is off limits, it was on a sunny September morning that my eye was drawn to a book stacked on the antique porcelain garden seat to the left of my desk. Written by one of my life-long idols, I had bought it years before and intended to devour it, but this memoir just always sat perched in its color coordinated pile collecting dust. I remember thinking to myself this is the day I am starting this. It was a calling from the Universe, I suppose. That book was This Time Together by Carol Burnett.