Welcome to Copper & Vine Living
It's funny how life works sometimes.
A few years ago, if you had asked me what I wanted my life to look like in this season, I would have rattled off a list without even pausing to think about it. Goals, projects, businesses, responsibilities, and all the things I was sure I should be building. I had the answer ready before you finished the question, because that's just who I was. Always planning, always moving, always with one eye on the next thing.
If you asked me that same question today, you'd get a very different answer. You'd probably also get a longer pause first.
Lately, Steve and I have found ourselves lingering at the kitchen table after dinner having the kind of conversations we somehow never made time for when life was busier. We keep circling back to the same question: what do we actually want the next chapter of our lives to look like? Not what we think it should look like. Not what anyone else expects of us. What we genuinely, honestly want.
That turns out to be a harder question than it sounds. After nearly three decades of marriage, of raising children, building businesses, navigating challenges, chasing opportunities, and spending years focused on whatever needed to be done next , we got very good at answering the question "what's required of us?" We're only now learning to answer "what do we want?"
So we've been sitting with new questions. What makes a life feel meaningful? What do we want more of, and what are we finally ready to let go of? What does success even look like when you're no longer interested in being busy just for the sake of being busy?
What's surprised us most is how simple our answers have become. We want more time together, and more of the kind of creativity that doesn't have a deadline attached to it. More books read slowly, more long walks without a destination, more family dinners that stretch into the evening because nobody wants to be the first to get up from the table. More laughter. More conversations that linger long after the plates have been cleared. More room, honestly, to just breathe.
Somewhere along the way, we realized that thoughtful living was never really about a house, a business, a destination, or a particular lifestyle. It's about being intentional with how we spend our days and what we choose to build around us. It lives in the stories we tell and the work we create. In the people we gather around our table and the spaces we call home. In the traditions we carry forward, the adventures we say yes to, and the small ordinary moments we slow down long enough to actually notice.
That, more than anything, is what Copper & Vine Living is about.
It isn't one business or one project. Think of it instead as a gathering place. Somewhere we can collect the things we're exploring, creating, learning, and enjoying as we go. Some of what you'll find here may touch on writing and publishing, business and creativity, travel, books, hospitality, wine, classic cars, beautiful spaces, or simply the lessons that come from paying attention to life while it's happening. Other entries might begin with nothing more than a question we're still trying to answer ourselves.
We don't have everything figured out, and one of the unexpected gifts of this season has been realizing we don't need to. For the first time in a long time, we're giving ourselves permission to be curious. To explore without knowing where it leads. To create things just because we love making them. To dream a little, and maybe most importantly, to build a life that fits who we are today, not who we were twenty years ago.
This Journal will grow the way life does, naturally, and a little unpredictably. There's no publishing schedule here, no content calendar quietly running the show. Some months you might find several new entries waiting for you; other months, just one. We're not chasing consistency for its own sake. We'd rather wait until we have a story worth telling, and then tell it well.
However you found your way here, through a book, a business, a shared interest, a friend's recommendation, or plain old curiosity, we're so glad you came. Pull up a chair. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, or, if the hour allows, a glass of wine.
We have a feeling this next chapter is going to be a good one.
— Mea & Steve
