Coffee #41 with Lesley Balla

Fifty Cups of Coffee #41: Lesley Balla
Date: December 19, 2024
Location: Zoom

How we know each other

Lesley and I first met on a pre-Feast Portland press trip, where we spent a glorious week exploring the beautiful Oregon coast with a fun group of travel writers. I’ve loved following her travels and life adventures on Instagram ever since!

What Lesley is doing now

Lesley currently lives in the Seattle, WA area with her husband, where she works as an editor and writer. She’s a digital editor of Taste of Home, and is also an editor and writer with 10Best

Three questions

During these Fifty Cups of Coffee chats, I ask each person the same three questions. The reasoning behind each is as follows:

Question 1 – Social media makes it easy for other people to think that they know us, when truthfully, we all only see a small sliver of someone’s life and who they really are. This is the interviewee’s chance to share something that is important to them that, for whatever reason, other people may not know.

Question 2 – We all have fears, no matter who are are or where we are in life. This helps connect us and show we are all more alike than we are different.

Question 3 – I believe the answer to this question helps show each person’s true values, passions, and their why in life.

There are no right or wrong answers to any of these. I’m including each person’s answers in first person. Their answers have been edited from my notes for length and clarity, but these are their words.

What is one thing you wish more people knew about you?

“This is actually the hardest question out of all three of them, because I feel like I’m an open book. I don’t feel like there’s really a whole lot people don’t know about me. If somebody doesn’t know something about me, it’s because they haven’t met me or they don’t know. I don’t really keep anything a secret.”

“While people have told me they found me warm and approachable, I always felt like I had a pretty tough, hard outer shell. I remember a friend of mine once described himself as a candy bar with a crunchy coating in a soft center. And I always kind of felt that way about myself. Maybe I can come across as a little hard or direct or abrupt. I think any of my friends who have known me for 40 years, they still find those moments with me where I’m too direct and they’re like, ‘that’s harsh.’ But I really am just a big giant softie. I cry at commercials. I want to help strangers on the street. If I see that they’re lost and they need directions, which annoys my husband to no end. I do kind of have this altruistic vein in me. And I think that it just comes from an empathetic softness that I have, and maybe not everybody knows that. Maybe I do kind of keep that a little closed, until you get to know me.”

What is your deepest fear?

“It’s growing old alone. I think that, especially as you age, and when you don’t have a lot of family around, you start to think about it. I do. I think about it all the time… yeah, it’s a genuine fear. I lived far from my mom for most of my adult life, but I love her. And when she got sick, I was going back to Ohio a lot. I was going from California to Seattle to Ohio and making this big trifecta.”

“She passed away in 2020 at the time of the pandemic because of Covid. But she was in assisted living because she had Parkinson’s, and it was pretty late stage. So she going to that facility and just seeing all these older people and whether their families come or not – especially in the memory care unit, how they can be grouped together, corralled together – but you still see how kind of lonely they all are because they’re all in their own minds. At least they did have physical people around.”

“But I do say with that fear of growing old alone, I still have this dream of Golden Girls-ing it later on. I’m like, well, if I lose Ted, because we don’t have kids to rely on, and even if you do have kids, you can’t always rely that they’re going to be there either, I think to my friends: let’s just make a pact now if we’re the ones who are left. We all just need to live together and just that’s how we’re going to live out our days. So while it’s a huge fear, I still try to think about what could happen and how I can manage that. It gets me very emotional. It’s scary.”

If you had unlimited funds, what would you do with your life?

“It would be a choice between which house I would be at in one week to the next. I definitely would invest in real estate, but I would also would love to have houses in different parts of the country. If I was lucky enough, I’d have them in different parts of the world, just to have someplace to land when I want to be somewhere else. I know everybody says ‘I would travel more,’ and that is true, but I think what unlimited funds would give me is space. I don’t even necessarily mean physical space. Those multiple houses don’t have to be big. They don’t have to be mansions. I don’t want to take care of something that just me and a few people living in it. Just to be able to buy myself this space, just to think and move a little bit easier, is tremendous.”

“I think about who I would take care of first: family, all of my friends. Nobody would be owning a mortgage anymore. Nobody’s kids would have to worry about how they’re going to get through school, because I don’t have kids. I love my friend’s kids, and I just want everybody to be set in some way.”

“I also would love to give away money. I know money doesn’t fix a lot of problems, but to give some of these charities or organizations money to help fix a problem in some way would just be amazing. I think about Mackenzie Scott, and what she started doing with her money is so admirable. Not only is it like a fuck you to her ex-husband (Jeff Bezos), it is just like, we can help the world! I’d help with organizations who deal with food insecurity – that is a huge one for me. During the pandemic, when I found myself all of a sudden a full-time Washingtonian, I was like, what can I do? We have a little food bank in town for the whole valley. So I started going there every day that I could, and volunteered to the point where I was there a lot. I worked double shifts. It was very, very rewarding. And, I do think that if I had even just a little bit more money to buy space and time, it would be to go back to school. I’d do something with food policy or something related. I would love to help at that level.”

“And like everybody else who dreams of having a ton of money, I would travel more. I wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t it be amazing to sit back and write a novel or a screenplay and just to have time and space to think about it?”

Lessons Learned

Lesley and I may have only met in person once, but our conversation progressed seamlessly, easily as if we were longtime old friends. I could have chatted with her all day! Here are a few takeaways from our conversation:

  • We all need to know we are not alone. Lesley’s answer to the second question really hit home, and I think especially for those of us who were adults and had aging parents or relatives in care homes during Covid, can sympathize. And we can certainly all empathize. To know we are not alone, especially during our last days and months – I think that’s something everyone wants as we age.
  • Do what you can now. I loved learning about Lesley’s volunteer work at her local food pantry. We don’t have to have unlimited funds to help others; there is so much we can do to help right now, in many ways.
  • The Golden Girls are goals. I can’t tell you how many times my own circle of friends has semi-joked about “Golden Girls-ing” it when we’re all older, so when Lesley brought it up, it just made my day. Again, it all circles back to community, doesn’t it? To support others and know we are supported. In the end, that’s what truly matters: each other.

Learn more about Lesley

You can follow Lesley @LesleyLA on Instagram.

Follow 50 Cups of Coffee

Follow 50 Cups of Coffee on Instagram.

Visit my main website: Urban Bliss Life.

Learn more about me at MarlynnSchotland.com.

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