How It Started.

My boss told me to spruce up the office.

My first reaction was: ugh. Great. Another thing on the list. I don't have time for this, I have seventeen actual job responsibilities and a pipeline to manage and approximately zero hours in the day to become an interior decorator on top of it.

And then something clicked in my brain and I thought: oh wait. OH. I have time for this.

This is the story of how that moment destroyed my bank account and completely changed my life and I have zero regrets about either of those things.

The Office, Before

A little backstory. My office at Zip Kit used to be a shared situation — me, Emree, and Cierra, all crammed into one space. It was my office first, and then I felt guilty that they were working out of weird corners around the building, so I was like, girls' room, come on in, we'll make it work.

Over time, Emree complained enough about the arrangement to Sven that she eventually got moved upstairs. Which, fine. We don't really talk about the upstairs people. The point is: she left. And suddenly Cierra and I had the whole space to ourselves, and we looked at each other and said — this needs to be cozy. It needs to walk up to whoever opens that door and immediately communicate: someone who runs things works here.

It's a power move. An intentional one.

The green accent wall was my idea. Obviously. A deep, moody green behind my dark walnut desk with that massive desert view out the window — I mean, come on. That's not a question. That's a statement. We painted it and I stood back and looked at it and felt the kind of satisfaction that I imagine people feel when they finish a puzzle or pay off a credit card, except better, because the wall was right there and it was exactly what I had pictured and the room already felt completely different.

But it still needed something.

The Plants

I bought plants for the office first — a few pothos, some succulents, a couple of those plants that live in water with their roots just floating around looking effortless and unbothered. I placed them around the room. Filled in the corners, put a couple on the desk, let one hang near the window where the desert light hits it in the late afternoon.

And I stood in the doorway and looked at what the room had become and thought: I want to live in a jungle. While I'm at work. Yes. This is correct. I want this everywhere.

So I bought more for the office. And then I went home and bought some for myself. Three pothos, a few succulents, some water plants. Just the vibe. Just the beginning of something I didn't fully understand yet.

Tiddles, and the Aloe Who Stayed

Here's the thing about me and plants before all of this: I was not good at it. Cactus? Dead. Spider plant? Ceased to exist. Anything that required any kind of attention or care or consistent watering schedule? Gone within weeks, sometimes days. I was, objectively, a plant killer.

Except for Tiddles.

Tiddles is a blue something — I genuinely do not know the full species, he's a blue-toned succulent and he has been alive on my shelf since before any of this started. Through the cactus deaths and the spider plant tragedies and every other botanical casualty in my past, Tiddles just sat there like: you're good, girl. Do your thing. I'll be here.

He was my one. My proof that I wasn't completely hopeless. My little blue anchor.

Now he has seventeen roommates and he's on his own dedicated shelf because he has earned that, and I imagine he looks around at the chaos sometimes and thinks: oh. So this is what we're doing now.

And then there's the aloe. I almost forgot about the aloe, which is honestly offensive to her because she has been with me just as long and she never gave up on me either. She wasn't exactly thriving before — surviving, mostly — but she stayed. She didn't abandon me like the rest of those weak little quitters. She held on. And now, in the middle of this whole plant era, she is actually doing well for the first time in a long time. Turns out she just needed me to figure out what I was doing.

Same, honestly.

The Switch

I don't know exactly when it flipped from "I bought some plants for the office" to "this is my entire personality and also a significant portion of my monthly budget." It happened gradually and then all at once, the way most things that matter do.

One day I went to Smith's for dinner. Just dinner. A normal grocery run. I came home with six plants and also dinner, in that order of priority.

I cannot tell you how much cheaper my life would be if I had just chosen a different vice. Truly. I could probably fund a small vacation on what I've spent at Home Depot since February. But I walk into my plant room now — the one with the espresso-stained workbench I built myself and the eight-foot floating shelf and the pothos starting to trail exactly where I want them — and I feel genuinely, deeply happy in a way that is hard to explain and easy to justify.

This is not a phase.

Tiddles knew first. He's been watching this coming for years. 🌿