Hi Reader,

Ooof. I decided to take an unexpected breather the last few weeks, but hopefully you haven't noticed until now, when I just pointed it out. 😂

A couple weeks ago, I was outside working from my laptop & in-the-zone. Afterward I noticed I had 9 new texts, 2 missed calls from my older sister and 1 voicemail. Rather than reading the group texts, I just called her back figuring she could catch me up on the group messages on the call. She started with something to the effect of,

😳 Turns out that I had somehow missed the notifications for a particularly important group text thread telling me that my parents had been in an accident... while riding their motorcycle. That was scary, because they're both in the early 70s and people rarely survive motorcycle accidents, and almost never without major injuries, yet BOTH of my parents walked away from theirs.

They'd been driving 55mph on back roads to avoid traffic and enjoy the mountain scenery while on vacation, when a school bus made a very wide turn at a dangerous intersection, blocking both lanes of traffic and both shoulders on either side of the road ––never saw my parents or the bike before making that turn.

My Dad immediately braked and managed to slow the bike to about 10mph before reaching the bus, and by then it had turned enough that he thought he was going to miss it entirely, but the crash bar on the side caught the bumper of the bus and flipped the bike, knocking them both off in different directions. It bent the metal bumper off the bus frame, dinged up the bike pretty good including both crash bars.

When time started rolling again and they 'woke up' in different parts of the road a few seconds later, the neighbor who'd seen the whole thing was trying to help get them inside where they could call an ambulance & move the bike out of the road.

Luckily, neither had any immediate bruising, or broken bones, but my Dad passed out shortly after and his leg started swelling up like a balloon so they went to the ER and were there for hours of testing. No internal bleeding, officially no broken bones, barely any scratches, and the swelling was already going back down. About 2 weeks later, the bruises have finally surfaced and they're very sore, but alive and healing well.

So, all that to say two things:

• my Dad is *actually* Superman, literally stopping the bike on a dime & almost entirely avoiding what should've been inevitable impact which could've easily been fatal for both of them... 🦸🏻
• I've been a bit distracted since then, because my brain has been preoccupied with worrying about their recovery & some other personal schedule-related changes that have thrown my productivity for a loop (again)!

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I've been working on revision rounds for my SquareKicker template, getting ready for their upcoming Template Marketplace soft launch next week, which has been super exciting! I cannot WAIT to show you what it looks like! I have at least 2 other templates brewing as well. The soft launch on Sept 12th, will be a shop preview only, and the shop will officially open for purchases in November. I'll make sure to share that launch date as soon as I know!

My husband's hours have changed again which means he's been at home with me all day every day and I have to admit I've been rather distracted by that lately in all the best possible ways. 😂 We've been going on walks or short hikes together with Luna (during one of those we saw a huge BLACK BEAR within view of the trail which was a bit unsettling to say the least), catch up on various shows or movies, chat and give ourselves space to dream about what's next. I'm so thankful that I've been able to take a lot of extra time off to hang out with him in the afternoons while that's possible!

Then, last week Merrill left a review of the century here in the Club, on my Web Designer Starter Kit template for Squarespace. THIS is the reason why I love what I do. 😍 Feedback like that = music to my ears!

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If you're new around here or you don't know my story & how I got it, I'm sharing it this week in today's post/video.

​From Graphic Designer to Side Hustler, to Full-time Business Owner: My Story​ READ / WATCH NOW

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Next week, I'll share my experience of what it was like to protect & trademark my business name, roughly how much it cost to hire help for that process, how long it took, and if I feel like it was worth it. 😬

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A lot has happened or been stumbled upon over the past couple weeks, but here's the highlights:

🎉 SquareKicker Templates They've just announced a public soft-launch (preview only) on September 12, 2024, with purchases available in November. I'll make sure to remind you, but you'll have plenty of time to peek, poke, and look around in between! Templates will be delivered immediately with 30 days of totally free access to SquareKicker's tool, and no ongoing subscription is required to continue using the template; only if you want to continue using SquareKicker's tool on it.

💎 FREE Gems & Nuggets ❶ Need a fun way to focus on work? Check out the free plan of LifeAt.io! ❷ RightBlogger* has been a big help this week improving my blog's video transcript, listing tags for my YT video, summarizing it for the YT description & more. Even the free plan is very useful! ❸ This podcast episode on Claire Pelletreau's Get Paid podcast with guest Ashley (of Systems Over Stress) was SUPER vulnerable, inspirational, and fascinating.

⏯️ Is it illegal to... ? Ashley, of Systems Over Stress, just interviewed a lawyer to discuss all things client results, sharing & promises related to those results, and what the US regulations are around that, in this free YouTube Live interview (replay)!

Whew! 😮‍💨 There's more I'm sure, but I think that's enough for now. LOL

See ya next week! (For real this time.)

Katelyn Web Designer & Educator ​Thrivin' on coffee, community, cursing & carefully laid plans!

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