Plugging my umbilical cord back in
Recharging in LA for the time being
Ever since I packed up my life in NYC and threw myself from the Cliffs of Certainty, a lot of people have been telling me how much they enjoy living vicariously through my adventures, or how they’re inspired by my apparent sense of direction and determination to go after what I want. While this current chapter of my life has indeed included many fun moments (and I am grateful for the reminders to appreciate this strange period of excessive freedom), it’s also been filled with anxiety, loneliness, depression, uncertainty, and an utter lack of both direction and control. When those feelings inevitably pop up, I am 1) usually too depleted to write about it with my trademark levity, and 2) assume you don’t want to hear me complain. But idk, let me know if you’d be into that sort of thing?
Regression
After 3 months of funneling substantial time and energy into applying to any copywriter job that would qualify me for Portugal’s D8 visa and hearing back from exactly zero, I finally decided to take it as a sign to cut my losses and chill the fuck out. It appeared my plan to force myself into a role-that-I-would-inevitably-resent for the sole purpose of obtaining a visa within a completely arbitrary timeframe was, shockingly, not meant to work out. When I inspected what exactly I was rushing towards—a stable life and home where I could finally get cracking on my permaculture dream life—I realized I had access to many of those elements right here at my mom’s house.
Gilmore Girls meets Grace & Frankie
Once I pushed past the worry that I was overstaying my welcome and (mostly) overcame the intense shame our society places on adults living with their parent(s)—or as I like to call it: multi-generational co-living!—I found myself in a pretty cushy situation. After all, this would be the perfect, and maybe only, opportunity to start implementing the permaculture designs for my mom’s yard before I eventually move abroad; and it would give me the hands-in-the-dirt experience I’ve been craving since leaving Lost Valley. Not to mention the fact that I have my own bathroom and car here, and the only rent I pay is in the form of nagging my mom to get rid of X or re-organize Y—which, as we all know, is priceless. :) [These are the blessings I must remind myself of when I’ve gone who-knows-how-many days without human interaction beyond my mother. Love ya, Ma!]
Since (unbeknownst to me at the time) moving in right before the new year, I’ve enjoyed two week-long escapes—to Encinitas in February and to NYC in March.
Keeping Busy
As soon as I declared myself my mother’s live-in landscape designer, I was eager to implement, implement, implement! However, it’s shaping up to be a slower process than I initially expected because I forgot that I’m only one person and these things take time. Thankfully, the permaculture principles are reminding me to Observe & Interact (laying in the sunshine and harvesting kumquats count!), Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback, and Use Small & Slow Solutions. We recently attended a 2-day Native Plant Garden Tour, which provided a bounty of new ideas and inspiration, so it’s probably for the best that all we’ve done so far is knock down a rotten arbor and trim/remove a bunch of trees.1 As tangible progress develops, I’ll be sure to share more updates.
The other reason outdoor progress has been slow is because I’ve internalized the toxic American belief that if you’re not making money or working on your career, YOU ARE WORTHLESS, so I am also participating in the 12-week Climatebase Fellowship, which takes up a good amount of my time and keeps me indoors.
Aside from that, I’m also…
finally exercising again after almost a year of very little movement (see below)
occasionally volunteering (aka flipping compost!) at the two urban gardens in my neighborhood
making time for introspection, self-care, and creative practices—phew!
Coming Up
I’ll be in LA through May, and then I’m headed to France with some family members to cheer on my 71-year-young mother as she competes at the HYROX World Championships! After that, I’ll likely bop around Europe for a week or two (plans TBD) before heading to New York for a wedding in late June. In the words of Natasha Bedingfield, “the rest [of my summer, and life,] is still unwritten.”
I continue to assume I’ll move to Portugal by the end of this year; but I’ve learned I can’t set a timeline for this, so I’m just going to trust that all the right things will unfold at all the right times.
Until then, cheers to manifesting muscles and more!
P.S. I just discovered that I can include videos in these posts(!) so I went back and added some essential clips to the following:
Three new videos!
Scroll to the bottom for a tour of the house we’re building!
Three new videos!
We hired people to take care of the trees, but the arbor was all me.
Pls do lean into the “anxiety, loneliness, depression, uncertainty, and an utter lack of both direction and control” I feel like that paired with your wit and humor could be amazingg