A specific liminal moment. That is where I am right now.
Summer ending. School starting. KAEIU on the edge of a new chapter.
I think the reason I write these Sunday Letters is because I want to show you the in-between. The threshold. Not the view from the other side, but the moment of standing in the doorway, neither here nor there.
So here is what the doorway looked like this week.
Right on time with fall markets about to ramp up, we found and purchased a new car. It all happened serendipitously. The dealer we had been in contact with happened to be selling his wife's car, and it was exactly what we were looking for. When you go from a barebones 22yr old hatchback to a newer SUV, even one that is 12 years old, the jump is so stark it felt like we had just driven off the lot in a luxury vehicle.
We have a sunroof. We have a rear view camera.
If you only knew how many times I have gotten out of the car mid-parallel park just to check how close I was to the curb. With my old Matrix, I had to manually adjust the mirrors, and the right side mirror was just too far away for me to make any adjustments. (I need to take a brief moment here to pat myself on the back and mention that, due to these limitations, I am an excellent parallel parker). On the highway, we used to hear the wind howling through the cabin. The speaker system was held together by optimism.
Now I can see behind me! The camera even gives me guidelines. It's the best thing ever.
Are you familiar with Daniel Kahneman's famous happiness study? The one that found that after an annual income of around $75K, day-to-day emotional wellbeing tends to plateau. Apparently more money beyond that point stops meaningfully improving how you feel on a daily basis. Getting this car felt like jumping from $25K to $75K on that scale. And honestly, I don't think a brand new 2026 car would make me feel much happier than this one does. If anything, it might make me more anxious. More to protect. More to lose.
The point of all of this is that in my liminal moment, I want to acknowledge something. There will be a day when KAEIU crosses its own $75K threshold. When the business goes from surviving to sustaining, from scraping to stable. I'm not sure exactly where that line is, but I know I am closer to it than I have ever been.
When I get there, I hope I feel exactly what I felt getting into that car for the first time. That specific, uncomplicated joy of finally having what you needed. Because I'm realizing that happiness doesn't live at the destination. It lives in the jump.
And I wonder if you have your own version of a sunroof. The thing that felt like a miracle when you got it, even though the rest of the world would call it ordinary. I hope you still let yourself feel it.
With love,
Maria
My husband is devastated about the sunroof. Absolutely inconsolable.