WTF Is Kimble-ing? Living Your Best Life in Small Moments

What exactly is Kimble-ing?

In this first episode, Kimble shares the story behind the word that eventually became a way of life — and now, a podcast.

What started as a nickname for her habit of curating spontaneous adventures with friends slowly evolved into something bigger: a philosophy about living intentionally, embracing curiosity, and finding joy in the small, everyday moments that make a life meaningful. 

But the journey to Kimble-ing didn’t happen overnight.

Kimble reflects on the experiences that shaped her perspective - from building businesses with her husband during the 2008 recession, to navigating unexpected loss, and ultimately beginning a new chapter of life in coastal North Carolina.

Along the way, she shares why the little things matter more than we realize — and why curating moments of joy, curiosity, and connection can transform how we live.

Kimble-ing isn’t about luxury or excess.
It’s about presence, play, and the pursuit of everyday magic. 

And this is just the beginning.

In this episode:

• The story behind how Kimble-ing became a verb
• Why intentional experiences matter more than expensive ones
• How loss, change, and reinvention shaped the Kimble-ing philosophy
• Moving from Nashville to Wilmington and starting a new chapter
• What listeners can expect from future Kimble-ing adventures

Transcript

Kimble: What is Kimble-ing?

Kimble-ing actually evolved. I didn't turn my first name into a verb out of vanity. I don't, it didn't even come up with the name. It's a long story, but if you know me, you know, they're mostly long stories, but I'm gonna try to give you the short version.

My husband, Boz and I work together and we lived together, so we were together a lot.

And it wasn't that happy, easy work that doesn't feel like work. The first time we worked together, we started a side gig real estate business and turned it into our little HGTV Worthy House Flipping success story that employed a small team, grew to millions, and was just about to sign the contract for the TV show when 2008 happened.

The bottom fell out of the real estate market and our lives. The contractor cheated us and took our last dime. Our partner stole from us, so we walked away from that business out of necessity, not desire.

The second time we worked together was just after that. When we decided at the beginning of a recession to start a marketing business together, me with a non-compete from a previous employer, I had just been laid off from.

No customers, him with no experience other than soccer, coaching, and house flipping.

We had no office at first, so we were home together working and living. That was amplified by the amount of time that we didn't spend together in our previous years. We'd been married for 11 years. I worked as a hotel consultant and a sales manager.

For most of those years, and I traveled four days a week, Monday through Thursday. Usually he was a soccer coach. He traveled travel teams on the weekends. Coached after school. Then for a few of those years, we even lived in different cities, so we were lucky if we saw each other once a week. For most of the beginning of our marriage, there was no time for the growing pains of marriage.

Nope. That hit us all at once at the beginning of a recession when we were trying to find our roles in our business, build our income and savings back up and create a legacy.

And in case you don't know me, there are a few more things that contributed to this whole understanding how Kimble-ing evolved. 

One. I died when I was 15. I came back.

I learned some things when I died that made me live a little bit differently. I'm writing a book about it because I do believe it's something you should share.

Two. I'm a lot, I've got several stories I could share about how other people told me indirectly how a lot I was, but we'll save that for another time.

Three. I am unfiltered, unapologetically. The thing I should have considered saying usually comes out well before the considering could possibly occur.

Four. I have a raging case of ADHD undiagnosed officially until I was 35 years old, but we knew, everyone knew.

It's not a disability, it's a superpower. You'll see.

Five. I'm Greek and Italian. So arguing is just a form of communication for me.

Arguing is my version of considering actually. Arguing is how my people taught me to work things out. It's not aggressive, it's just back and forth opinions of the arguers until a consensus is or is not reached.

So where you're asking is the short part of this story. Well, here it comes.

One day after years of working in the same office, after trying working at different offices, after me being a lot, after growing our baby marketing business into a big marketing business, Boz and I sat down together and discussed the boundaries between work and marriage.

We decided we needed for a healthy marriage and healthy work to take a break. It's not a break from the marriage, it's a break from each other. Every Saturday would be our day off. He would go do things with his people. I would go do things with my people, but we were not allowed to be together in that whole day.

We needed space.

Now, Boz and I used to joke about how we would work a room at events. I would always flit around the room from group to group, checking in with folks. He'd pick a place and let them come to him. This day off wasn't much different from that. I would plan ahead, call a friend, pick a theme. We would go, he would stay in one place.

At our house. At mom's house. At his friend's house, on the soccer pitch.

Sometimes my day out was exploring at art galleries. Other times it was distilleries. Sometimes that day was vintage clothing stores.

Other times it was record shops or hot chicken shacks. Always something different and something curated.

And one day as mommy and I dropped the convertible top and headed off to explore all three Nashville, United Apparel liquidators stores, UAL, she said it.

She made my name into a verb.

She announced we were going Kimble-ing. And that name caught on. When friends would come to town for the weekend, they would ask for a curated Kimble-ing trip through sightseeing or local bars or music venues. Fast forward 10 years.

I do not have any plans of podcasting. I'm having a conversation with my future podcast producer. It wasn't the first time he told me I was starting a podcast. He'd been telling me for two years.

I still don't exactly know what this is, but I am armed with his insistence that other people will enjoy the conversations and even learn something from them.

What do we hope they learn?

How the small things matter so much. And how to make them matter more and how to grab joy from everyday moments and how we use what we have to make, how we live more fulfilling.

And as we reviewed the potential names for the podcast, I shared the story of those days off exploring.

I shared what mommy called them and he said, that's it. The podcast is Kimble-ing. 

We've been planning Kimble-ing for a couple months now. This space was actually planned, not executed yet, because nothing really ever works out exactly like you plan it. We're waiting on curtains and we're waiting on paint touch-ups, and we're waiting on baskets over there, and we're waiting on wallpaper up there.

There's a whole lot of design aspects to the Kimble-ing podcast experience that you will see evolving under time, but something I have been really committed to this year. Is worrying less about things being perfect and worrying more about them being finished. So this is a part of that. This is the vulnerability of me saying, I'm not ready to do this yet.

I don't have all the guests lined up. I don't have all the topics lined up. I do kind of know how I wanna ease y'all into Kimble-ing. Every month will be another adventure. We'll team up with my guests and we'll curate and converse, and maybe as we go along, we'll grow along the way.

You're gonna learn about things like. My concert tea collection, my vintage clothing collection, my obsession with tennis shoes, and you're gonna meet another part of my business.

My business is marketing.

My company is OnPromos. And OnPromos has this world famous, multimedia, Maven mascot Proforma Petunia who I'm gonna introduce you to in a minute.

We have to get her ready for her closeup.

She is bossy, opinionated, frequently unfiltered, and knows everything about marketing.

Now be warned. She is more unfiltered than me. She cusses frequently. But she's a hundred percent sure that she's right. And much like Boz used to say about himself, if she's not right, she's definitely more right than everybody else.


Petunia: Oh my land.

If you ever needed the definition of the theme of this winter's, comfy, cozy apparel and snugly goodness KANATA Group has found it. 

This coastal hoodie is all the things.

It is a blanket.

It is a sweatshirt.

It is a hoodie.

Petunia: but most of all, it is a feeling.

No matter where you wear it, you are going to feel like you are surrounded in warmth love and comfort and all the things that make a house a home. 

Look at this lovely nope patch, that just makes this the perfect way to spend my entire winter.

This is clearly one of Petunia's picks.

I just did a huge move.

Kimble: I moved from Nashville where I had lived for over 20 years to Wilmington, North Carolina, where I always wanted to live.

With my husband in retirement, we had planned to create a life for ourselves somewhere between Southport and Baldhead Island, which is this magical little place off the southern most tip of North Carolina.

Well, those plans changed while we were finishing up our bucket list. While we were planning out that legacy that I talked about when I started talking about Kimble-ing. After we had removed all of the obstacles to us cutting back a little bit on work, living a little bit more out in the world, traveling, ultimately retiring to this place on the North Carolina coast. Everything changed in nine hours in one day, two and a half years ago when my husband died suddenly and left me with that bucket list. Me supposedly unstoppable. Literally the spokesperson for UPS about being unstoppable. And there I was nine hours later, not even sure how I would take the next breath living in the house that we were going to rebuild together.

And that was pretty much where I decided. It was going to be time to go somewhere, a new place, and that began this journey. I didn't know exactly where I was gonna go at first. I took that bucket list, I turned it into my fuck it list. You'll see the skull and rose ring on my fuck it list finger.

Sometimes it's his wedding ring on that finger as I finish this becoming me, not we. Kimble-ing is gonna be a part of that too. So I'm gonna take you through a little of that journey.

I'm gonna take you through the last Nash tour, the places that I hated to leave that I needed to see one more time before I go.

Some of those places were people, not places. I'm gonna take you through the discovering of Wilmington. It doesn't really matter what the place is. You may not be all that interested in coastal North Carolina. I don't know. But it's about change and growth and relocating and doing the things that put you in a place that makes you better.

'cause I was not better for a long time. I had a lot of tools that I had I learned when I died. I took with me when Boz died. People used to say to me, I'm so sorry you lost your husband. And I would say back to them, he is not lost. I know exactly where he is. I'm the one who's lost.

Kimble-ing partially. Is gonna be finding me again, finding me here in this place surrounded by new things and new people and water, which is really the only reason I moved here.

To be closer to water, I can walk a mile 0.6. And be at the waterfront. I can drive 15 minutes and be at the beach. Now, I couldn't park there to save my life. And if you're any familiar with the area around Wilmington and all the beaches, you know this is true. But I'm here and I can put my toes in the sand.

you're gonna learn a little bit more about all of that over the next few months. You're gonna learn about the fabulous going away party that the Music City Brewers Festival opened up to me. You're gonna learn about finding the restaurants you love and the vintage clothing stores that you love, and the records that are gonna be a part of that tiny collection that you are building.

So what is Kimble-ing Kimble-ing is curating an intentional life well lived.

It's not about luxury or excess. It's about presence and play and the pursuit of everyday magic.

Won't you come Kimble-ing with me?

​
Petunia: World famous social media, Maven Mascot ProForma Petunia here with the first of SanMar's, Petunia's Picks. Now SanMar, has been a very supportive supplier of ours for years. They have some kick ass brands. One of my favorites is OGIO, mostly because of the softness sensation that is their sweatshirts.

Do you see what I did there with that alliteration? 

This particular sweatsuit is a cardigan and a straight leg pants. I'm gonna have Kimble Jong-un, my dictator boss, show this off for you in one of our podcast episodes because they were rude enough to send her size, not mine. But let me tell you, this pocket is perfect for Petunia travel. This color is the color of the year for 2026.

You cannot go wrong with a Cloud White. This is on trend in so many ways. It will be the outfit of the season in this here podcast office. I can tell you 400% percent sure. This is chum not swag.