I Drove Eight Hours to Go to a Bookstore…and Didn’t Buy a Single Book

Sometimes the longest drives aren’t about where you’re going. They’re about who you become on the way home.

Every once in a while I do something that makes absolutely perfect sense to me and absolutely no sense to anyone else. This past Tuesday was one of those moments. I drove from Yorba Linda to Summerland/Santa Barbra and back in a single day. Eight hours in the car. One destination. Godmothers Bookstore. If you’re wondering whether I ran into Oprah or Meghan Markle, unfortunately the answer is no. I looked exactly once, mostly out of obligation, but they were nowhere to be found. I did, however, leave with a candle (for my MIL Birthday) and a T-shirt, which somehow felt like a perfectly reasonable return on an eight-hour investment.

Now before anyone asks the obvious question, no…I didn’t buy a single book.

I know.

Driving eight hours to a bookstore only to leave without a book feels like showing up to Disneyland for the parking lot. But here’s the thing about me that I’ve finally accepted. I don’t like feeling forced to buy something simply because that’s what you’re “supposed” to do. I wanted to wander. I wanted to smell new books, admire beautiful covers, imagine the conversations happening inside those books, and then leave with whatever genuinely made me happy. Apparently this time it was a t’shirt. I have made peace with the fact that I am an unusual person.

Ironically, I did listen to two books during that trip, and I genuinely think they changed the way I look at my life. The first was Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab. If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet you’ve probably seen someone recommending it, and after finally reading it I understand why. One simple idea stayed with me long after I finished the book. I can’t control whether other people respect my boundaries. I can’t control how they respond to them. I can only control the boundaries I choose to set and how consistently I honor them. It sounds obvious until you realize how much of life we spend trying to manage other people’s behavior instead of our own.

The second book was Atomic Habits by James Clear. Again, another wildly popular book that somehow managed to live up to its reputation. His argument isn’t particularly revolutionary on the surface. Goals are wonderful, but systems are what actually change your life. Becoming just one percent better every day doesn’t sound exciting, but over time those tiny decisions quietly compound into an entirely different person. Somewhere between those two books and several hours of driving the California coast, I realized they were both teaching me the exact same lesson from different directions.

You can only change yourself.

That sentence sounds almost disappointingly simple until you start applying it to the parts of your life that frustrate you the most.

If you’ve been around me for more than five minutes, you’ve probably heard me say I have two very specific goals right now. I want to cook more, and I want to be nicer to my husband. The second one usually gets a laugh because people immediately assume I’m secretly terrorizing David. Let me clarify. I’m not mean to my husband. At least I certainly don’t wake up each morning thinking, How can I make this man’s day slightly worse? The problem is much quieter than that.

I have exceptionally high expectations of myself.

Somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, I started holding everyone else to those same expectations and not telling them about my expectations. It took years of therapy before I understood that what looked like discipline on the outside often felt like pressure to the people I loved most. One of my greatest strengths had quietly become one of my greatest weaknesses.

Cooking has a remarkably similar story. I learned to cook when I was very young because my mom worked three jobs and was never home, but somewhere in adulthood I convinced myself I hated it. In fact, I had built an entire fantasy around making enough money that I would never have to cook again. If I could just outsource dinner forever, I thought I’d finally be happy. Looking back, that’s actually a hilarious goal considering some of my favorite memories happen around beautifully set dinner tables. Apparently I didn’t hate cooking nearly as much as I hated feeling obligated to cook.

That’s the funny thing about strengths. We celebrate them so enthusiastically that we rarely stop to ask what they’re costing us. I did exactly what so many ambitious women, especially Black women, are encouraged to do. Work harder. Set bigger goals. Raise your standards. Accomplish more. Be exceptional. And those habits served me incredibly well. They helped me become a nurse. They helped me build a community. They helped me launch a nonprofit and an app. They helped me accomplish things that younger me could hardly imagine.

But every strength casts a shadow.

High standards become perfectionism.

Discipline becomes rigidity.

Achievement quietly crowds out tenderness.

Productivity leaves very little room for presence.

That’s the part nobody talks about.

This is exactly why I believe so deeply in therapy and books. One helps you understand yourself. The other introduces you to people who have already wrestled with the same questions. Together they give you language for problems you couldn’t quite explain before. Once you can finally name the problem, you can begin solving it.

Not with giant life overhauls.

With ridiculously small habits.

For me, becoming a kinder wife doesn’t start with some grand romantic gesture. It starts with sitting on the couch every evening after the kids go to bed. No phone. No emails. No scrolling. Just a blanket and a few quiet minutes. Maybe I drink tea. Maybe I journal. Maybe David comes downstairs and we talk. Maybe he doesn’t. The point isn’t whether a conversation happens. The point is creating space where one could happen. That’s a habit I can actually keep.

Cooking has taken a similar approach. For the last six months my only goal was cooking one dinner a week. That’s it. Nothing glamorous. No homemade pasta. No elaborate dinner parties worthy of Ina Garten’s approval. Just one meal. Now I’m stretching that to two, and I’ve discovered something wonderfully unexpected. Making a beautiful cocktail alongside dinner makes the entire experience feel celebratory instead of obligatory. Suddenly I’m studying restaurant menus differently. I’m taking pictures of dishes instead of simply eating them. I’m noticing spice blends, serving platters, table settings, and little details I spent years overlooking. Last week I ran out of oregeno for the first time in my adult life, which may not sound particularly noteworthy, but trust me…it’s progress.

Somewhere between an eight-hour drive, a bookstore where I didn’t buy a book, two wonderful authors, and a candle that absolutely could have been purchased much closer to home, I realized I wasn’t actually searching for new goals.

I was searching for better systems.

Maybe that’s what growth looks like after all.

Not becoming someone entirely different.

Just becoming one percent softer.

One percent more present.

One percent kinder.

One beautifully ordinary day at a time.

Always Have, Always Will ~ Kalie