9/9/2023
🌍 TRAVELS 🌍
I’m currently in Daneland (aka Denmark), staying in an ecovillage called Hjortshøj (don’t ask me how to pronounce it! My brain cannot comprehend Danish). I’ve been traveling since I left Seattle in July 2022.
In this chunk of adventuring, I’m visiting ecovillages and intentional communities in Europe to inform my desires on lifestyle.
👩👩👧👦 COMMUNITY 👨👩👧👦
It’s becoming clear how important a deep sense of community is for me.
The times in my life that have felt the most community-rich have also had unmistakeable feelings of belonging, comfort, and joy.
I’m also getting more clear that I want to live IN a community rather than live as a solo city slicker who creates community outside their home. Though the specifics of what I want to join/create still feel unclear.
Traveling has been awesome. And also difficult. This period is the most socially disconnected I’ve been in my life (in my whole life!) And I’ve felt depressed at times because of it. As much as I’m learning from traveling, I also feel excited to plant a root or two sometime soon.
👩❤️👨 PARTNERSHIP 👩❤️👨
Angela and I are still in partnership.
They are going through some notable health undertakings, and I’m brushing up against an inability to be as patient and supportive of a partner as I’d like to be.
I recognize that the depths of connection are forged in the hardest of times—so I hope to figure out how to show up in a way that I can look back on and feel proud of. I don’t mean to be too hard on myself—I think I’m doing a pretty good job. And, I want to make sure I do my best!
I was looking at marriage internet memes the other day and realized I related to all of them. It *feels* like Angela and I married. This realization scared me a bit because we never had an official “opt-in” ceremony. It just kind of happened.
I’m in contemplation if I’d want to have such a ceremony, but it will require a lot more thought to clarify my views and desires on the matter.
✍🏻 WRITING, WORK, PASSION ✍🏻
At the moment, I’m making my money from writing for a blog called Science of People. TBH I feel very lucky for the opportunity to make money by being creative and practicing writing.
I’m feeling a roaring creative passion emerge in writing my own blog/newsletter. I’m slowly starting to understand who I am as a writer and how to write more vulnerably.
I am still coaching—though it’s not currently the center of my passion-o-verse. Partially because I want to make room for writing right now. And after having some rewarding immersions with clients over the past year, it feels good to get a little space from it to let it breathe.
I also feel some passion brewing about facilitating workshops again. Though i feel blocked by fear at the moment. I led a workshop at Burning Man in 2022 and only 4 people showed up. My nightmare came true! It was actually a decent workshop, but it tugged on some deep fear cords around “social failure,’ rejection, and the like. Things to work through.
🤜🏻🤛🏽 CONNECTIONS 🤜🏻🤛🏽
I’ve been reflecting a lot on relationships (due to my lack of them at the moment! 😊 ) and am fascinated to realize how few connections last longer than one chapter.
When I lived in Seattle I spent several years as a socialite. I was connecting and sharing intimacy up the wazoo. But when I look back, while I do have a handful of close friends who I’ve stayed in touch with from that period, most people have faded away.
I don’t know what to do with this recognition of how rare and precious lasting friendships are, but it feels important. Both in determining how to allocate my time/energy, and in appreciating the connections that do renew themselves across chapters.
🙂 GENERAL LIFE FEELINGS 🙂
Overall, I’m feeling pretty content with my life and weirdly emotionally stable. Lol. I say ‘weirdly’ because when I was younger, I used to thrust myself into transformational experience after transformational experience. Constantly getting ripped open and reborn. Passionately experimenting with intimacy and pushing connections to the brink of their capacity.
But I was also almost exclusively burnt out, and my urgency felt largely motivated by fear/lack.
While I still burn out and get depressed, for the most part I feel existentially/spiritually OK in a way I didn’t used to. But in finding greater balance, I also worry that I’ve lost some of my zest. Am I sucking the marrow of life the same way I used to? A slow-burning inquiry to keep on the grill.
💕 APPRECIATE YOU 💕
That’s all! Thanks for reading if you did 🙂 Sending love, hope, and a box of giggles your way ❤