Coffee and a Conversation

As Told Over Brunch is a home for intelligent discourse from the twenty-something perspective - so the stuff you gossip about over mimosas on Sunday morning or over takeout on your friend's couch when happy hour ends too early. We love chatting about our lives, whether it be the relationships we’re building (or destroying), lessons we've learned at work, struggles at school, growing pains we've felt, or even the food we’re talking over.

The Unfinished Painting, or My Grandma’s Optimism

October 08, 2019 by Cazey Williams in Cazey's Column, Life In Your 20's, life lessons

My grandmother never had spectacular health. Since I was a kid, she hobbled around on either a cane or walker before she graduated eventually to a wheelchair in which, at family dinners, I rolled my cousins around the house while my grandma swatted at us with her picker-upper stick and shouted, “That’s not a toy!” What was even less of a toy was her electric scooter, and it was also much more fun.

In the last couple of years, my grandma became bedridden. I do not think she would have used that word. My grandma was an optimist. “Bedridden” may imply some failing or inevitability. My grandma did not have that outlook.

The Year of Doing You

January 01, 2017 by Cazey Williams in Cazey's Column, Life In Your 20's, life lessons

Last year on this exact day, I wrote a post called "Say No to Resolutions, Say Yes to Experiences." If you read it (or remember it, you dedicated reader you), the piece radiates with optimism for 2016 and even joked that Trump may win the presidency. And, well, that's no longer a joke.

I also encouraged you and myself to seize opportunities and learn and grow in a new year. 2016 couldn't be a loss that way. I still stand by that. Okay, I'm about to admit I may have misled you.

Resolutions are challenges to yourself that are binary in their outcome: you either succeed or you fail. There's rarely middle ground. And life is not black and white. That is why you should embrace experiences. You can't fail at those. Even your failures are experiences.