Reawakening

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The past few weeks have been a very dynamic and transformative time of personal growth. In recommitting to yoga, I asked the universe for a mentor, and she stepped forward. From the first few minutes of Jenn’s class, I knew that I had stumbled upon something good. Jenn’s class is a mixture of yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, deep breathing, and intuitive movement – it’s one of the most intense, sensation-filled, and fun indoor fitness experiences I’ve ever had. She uses the lats (latissimus dorsi) and obliques as the gateway muscle to athleticism and dynamism: “your lats are your wings.” 

In a world that is full of superficial influencers reciting tired sequences and claiming to know the way, it is refreshing to learn from a teacher who is humbly sharing what she knows, pointing us in the right direction, and authentically embodying truth and light: “the best teachers tell us where to look but not what to see.” In her class, I have rekindled my inner flame, leaned into my strength, and found joy, release, and transformation. She reminds us that “groundedness does not mean stagnation.” I have learned a lot about moving through pain and protecting my energy from negative influences. Most of all, I have been reawakened and reminded how to have fun in my body. 

As a consequence of these experiences, I have been thinking a lot about how to prioritize movement and fitness in my next step. This is a key element of my life that I can’t neglect or forget: in San Diego, this looked like surfing; in Colorado and Chile, this looked like trail running, skiing, and mountain biking. For me, the opposite of movement is the sense of being “trapped” and this is one of the reasons I am suffering in San Diego: air pollution and dangerous road conditions keep me from moving freely in the ways that I want to. Thus, I’ve come up with a new framework for evaluating all my ideas – let’s call it the “triangle of joy and meaning:” 

It’s pretty straightforward. To give a little more specificity to this framework, I’ll sort out my life goals from the previous post into categories:

• Movement and fitness
• Exercise: mountain bike, run on trails, paddle? Ski?
• Home and garden:
• Learn to grow all types of vegetables
• Learn natural building techniques, including underground / earth-sheltered construction
• Adopt a dog and maybe some cats
• Take care of chickens and maybe goats
• Community and relationships:
• Establish a community structure that gives other homestead-minded folks the opportunity to plug into what I am currently striving to create from scratch

Now let’s use it to evaluate four big ideas for my future. #1 involves remaining employed, whereas #2-#4 involve taking a sabbatical. I’m feeling very tired and burnt out after remaining steadily employed since ~age 16, and although unemployment is generally frowned upon and much less fun post-age-26 due to the health insurance climate of the United States, I think a period of unemployment could be useful to push me into a more meaningful way of being. I sometimes wonder if one strategy for moving beyond a world that considers tired, overworked, and burnt out “knowledge” employees the default is for us to refuse to be tired, overworked, burnt out “knowledge” employees.  Still, it’s almost certainly the case that the reason I am burnt out is the academic and government hierarchies / bureaucracies that I have subjected myself to over the past seven years, and that a move to the private sector or just a more effective working group could resolve many of these problems. But I digress. Here we go:

1. Buy a property with an existing home and a large lot where I can start building a farm and cooperative community. This involves a mortgage and transitioning to remote work with my current employer or with a new employer. This strategy prioritizes Home and Garden most of all, keeps the door open to Community and Relationships, and should only happen if I can find a property near a system of trails so that I can honor Movement and Fitness. This is probably my favorite choice right now and would be financially possible in northern California or Maine. This could also allow me to rebuild the cedar cabin we deconstructed a couple years ago (see #3). 

2. Put my stuff into storage, buy a touring / bikepacking setup, and go on a tour from San Francisco to Seattle and/or the Great Divide Bikepacking Route that runs from New Mexico to Banff. This honors Movement and Fitness most of all, could honor Community and Relationships if I meet like-minded individuals on these tours, and could honor Home and Garden if I stumble upon the place where I want to build the community in (1). I’ve been feeling inspired by people who, when confronted by uncertainty, simply “start walking.” A long time on my bike could help me peel away layers of expectation, regret, and disappointment, and rebuild confidence, strength, and life energy. 

3. Buy a small amount of land in northern Wisconsin near my folks’ cabin and rebuild the cedar cabin we deconstructed a couple years ago as a hunting retreat. This approach would honor Home and Garden in that I would be learning valuable construction skills, would honor Movement and Fitness in that I would be working with my hands and could ride my bike / run around in my free time, and would honor Community and Relationships in that I would be near my folks. Although I like the idea of using the construction process as a practice of healing and growth, I do think it honors my three triangle points a bit less than (1). 

4. Go to work on an existing farm community (e.g. southern Oregon) to further develop my skills and meet like-minded people. This approach honors Community and Relationships most of all and honors Home and Garden to the extent that I would be developing skills for my eventual Home and Garden. This approach does not really honor Movement and Fitness, especially considering the possibility of long periods of wildfire smoke / unhealthy air. This is not as appealing considering I am pretty tired of being told what to do. 

Low Tide

San Diego is currently experiencing “king tides”, a colloquial term for the exceptionally high and low tides that occur when a New Moon coincides with the lunar perigee (the moon is closest to earth in its elliptical orbit) and to a lesser extent the solar perihelion (earth is closest to the sun in its elliptical orbit). Although the high king tides tend to make headlines, I find the extremely low king tides fascinating. It’s strange to see grass- and moss-covered reefs emerge from underwater, and to see waves breaking so far from shore in places they don’t usually break. These low tides even sound different, a steady shhhhhh instead of the periodic thunderous crashes of high tides. 

The past week has been very different from the past year. Raffelina and I are officially separated. I bought an unlimited membership at a yoga studio down the street ($40 for the month!), and I have been doing hot yoga every day, sometimes twice a day. My mind is sharp, my heart rate and blood pressure are very low, and my skin is clear. I have been flossing, grooming my facial hair regularly, and making my bed. My housemate’s cat Sookie picked up on my transition and has been spending a lot of time hanging out with me and sleeping on my bed. We are similar in many ways: she loves to chill and relax indoors, but then goes outside for extended periods to explore the grounds, climb trees, hang out on the roof etc. I can’t surf at the moment due to my ruptured eardrum, but I am staying occupied by posting unnecessary stuff on Craigslist / Offerup, applying for remote data science positions, journaling, drinking tea, and going on walks. It is nice not to have to drive or leave my neighborhood, except to go to the grocery store! 

For the next step, much of my thinking revolves around what happens with my job. Last week I started a conversation around the possibility of working remotely after “emergency maximum telework” ends. We are meeting about it this coming Wednesday, but through the brief conversations I have had in the meantime, I am doubtful this could be achieved within my time frame. For example, my supervisor suggested that I “be open to a couple years in Sacramento”. During an unrelated meeting, the head of our group attributed the communication failures of the past year and a half to “not seeing each other in the hallway”. So it seem as though there is a bit of a culture clash: I don’t have much patience for working informally, haphazardly, and chaotically. It’s become abundantly clear over the past year through conversations with my coworkers and through my own experiences that the work culture in my group is consistently stressful, frenzied, and frantic, so I am hesitant to tether my future to this sinking ship. I have started applying for remote positions – generally data science oriented. 

I recently had an opportunity to visit with my Aunt Peg, Uncle Keith, and Keith’s parents Ted and Carol. Like my grandma, Carol is wise in a very matter-of-fact way. After I shared much of my process and my goals, Carol said (paraphrasing), “Well, it seems like you should take some time to visit lots of different places and then choose the one that feels right.” She inadvertently pointed out what has been a big limitation of my iterative life process so far. Generally, I have relied on logistical factors (employment or funding) to steer where I go. This worked really well in Colorado and Chile because both those places are ideal for someone like me. Although my San Diego move was a necessary and important step, I definitely now understand the limitations of allowing those logistical factors to steer me so much. It turned out to be a good place to spend some time and get to know the ocean, but not a place I can spend my life. 

From a climate perspective, I am really excited about living in a verdant, foggy, misty, mossy, and rainy environment with mountains and forests. I became acquainted with this vibe in Patagonia and I’ve been excited to get back ever since. If I am to stay in the United States, this goal steers me north of the San Francisco Bay Area. Humboldt County, California has a very similar climate to Aysén, Chile and would be a great hedge against climate change: the climate projections I’ve seen recently suggest that the storm track that dumps rain on Humboldt County during the fall, winter, and spring will remain consistent or bring more water. Because the "green rush" has been ended by crackdowns on illegal growing operations, lots of affordable properties are up for sale there. That said, Humboldt is extremely remote and isolated. 

To explore all the possibilities along the rainy coast, I have considered going on a bike tour from San Francisco to Seattle along the coast highway and getting to know all the little towns on California’s Lost Coast and the Pacific Northwest. I might be able to accomplish this with the ~three weeks of vacation that I will have stored up by April or May of this next year, but I also wonder whether that would add a stressful element to my journey (“gotta get to Seattle by next week”). I think it could be fun to have a bike setup where my backpacking pack can be converted to a pannier so I could lock my bike and go on a backpacking trip for a couple days. If my current job doesn’t work out and I don’t find a remote one in the meantime, this could be a good option. 

I have broadly been putting thought into what exactly I want to do with my life, more than just “where”. In no particular order, these things are:

- Learn to grow all types of vegetables

- Learn natural building techniques, including underground / earth-sheltered construction 

- Adopt a dog and maybe some cats 

- Take care of chickens and maybe goats 

- Exercise: Mountain bike, run on trails, paddle? ski? 

- Establish a community structure that gives other homestead-minded folks the opportunity to plug into what I am currently striving to create from scratch 

I have recognized that there may be a tradeoff between my vegetable-growing goals and skiing. Places with snow have a much shorter growing season and would require that I get really crafty with greenhouses and cold frames. This could still work, but the best places to enjoy the snow are where the snow is cold and fluffy (like Colorado, Minnesota, or Alaska). In other words, a place with a decent growing season that still experiences some snow (e.g. the Pacific Northwest or Maine) would come with many months of sloppy, slushy, wet snow, especially as the climate warms in these places. Because Colorado is so high, it gets lots of “cold smoke” and plenty of sun throughout the spring, summer, and fall. But there is still the limitation of soil: Colorado’s soils are extremely thin with very little organic matter. I honestly feel like I have mostly gotten my kicks when it comes to skiing; the only experiences that could top previous ones are living near an experts-only or ski-only resort such as the ones in Utah or the Swiss Alps. Maybe when I get tired of homesteading, I can retire to one of these places. 

You will notice traveling didn’t make it onto my list above (aside from the potential West Coast bike tour). Maybe I will feel the need later in life, but what I really want right now is to be in a place for a while. I want this stability so that I can adopt a dog, invest my free time in creative projects and in my own future, stop paying rent, prepare for climate change and steady societal collapse, and put my small stack of chips into land rather than cash. A big part of what didn’t work in my recent relationship was that I was not established and not in a place I really wanted to be. This is a bit of a Catch-22: I want to live in the middle of nowhere, but I haven’t found the partner and community to go do that with. It seems though, that I probably won’t find these people until I am a little closer to doing what I want to be doing. 

I don’t really know how my family fits into all this. A small farm with animals wouldn’t give me much leeway to take extended trips home. Northern Minnesota is definitely on the table for this reason, but the climate doesn’t really support my vegetable growing goals. I could extend the growing season with greenhouses and cold frames, but I would still be limited to about half the year. There are no mountains there.