2018 Year In Review

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to say to sum up this past year. My usual walkthrough of the ups and downs doesn’t have the same flow of years past, and it also doesn’t feel right to create a list or drone on in a long narrative. I just want to tell you about a couple of key things I learned that created a huge shift in my life for the year to come.

I entered 2018 believing that it would be a great year. I talked it up, got really hyped for it; it was going to be the year I graduated and moved on to something new. It was going to be the year I would travel, take that trip I had been talking about. I thought I would do a lot of exhilarating things; that it would be fun, carefree and exciting.  

Right from the first second of 2018 something wasn’t right. It kicked off with mediocrity, and that carried through. I broke off a new relationship in the beginning of the year, I fell back into my own habits, and the depression I thought I had beaten snuck up on me slowly once again. I settled right back into a dull semester of school, I had to leave my favorite job for something more in line with my intended career path, and I had no plans to take any trips. Not exactly the hyped up amazing 2018 I had hoped for.

However, this not-so-stellar start didn’t mean that everything was mediocre. One thing that happened in between the first few months of the year was that I learned to love the everyday tasks; I lived on my own, had a pet cat, cooked my food, cleaned my house, settled into being a homebody in my hometown. Once I made peace with the fact that this was my life for a few more months until I finished school, I discovered that it wasn’t all bad. It was a calm and restorative time, and the skill to enjoy the everyday is an important one to learn in order to keep myself grounded throughout any ups and down in life moving forward.

I made it to graduation in May feeling pretty good. The day itself was anticlimactic; I didn’t walk across the stage or have a big celebration. I didn’t want to. I was a college student and then the next day I was walking away from campus for the last time. It was a bit strange; I had never loved college, but I had spent half a decade there. I came out with about 2 friends even though throughout my time I’d had more and less, depending on the semester. I felt that era of my life end and a new, weird, in-between chapter began.

I tried really hard to get a specific job that I thought I wanted. I interviewed several places and didn’t get offered anything. It made me question what I really did want. Instead, I moved to a new position in my current workplace. It was a step up, however I had to make peace with the fact that it wasn’t exactly what I had been hoping for.

I did go on a short trip to Los Angeles after graduation, and it rekindled that desire to see the world again. It also whispered the question I was avoiding: what exactly is your plan, Story?

Because, if I’m honest, I kind of thought that things would just fall into place. I figured that nobody really knew what they wanted to do after graduation, but that it would work out anyway. However, after I was finally finished with school, my path still had not revealed itself to me. I panicked for a moment, but then I took a breath, realizing that I had some time to pause and think things over. There was no rush, so I decided to wait it out for a bit.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that summer was my meditative period. I didn’t do a lot outwardly, but this was when my internal cogs began to start turning and when I really started to get into the meat of what my questions were. Who am I? What do I want? How do I make my ideal life a reality?

With not a lot else to distract me, I had to face these questions. I tried out a lot of different things. I stopped going to church. I tried being vegan. I went back to church. I ate bacon and cheese again. Now I’m somewhere in the middle.

Ask and you shall receive, and I eventually got some answers. This was roughly how it went:

QUESTION 1

How can I live the life I want?

I still wasn’t sure at this point what I wanted because I had always equated living my happiest life with finding my perfect career. Suddenly it hit me – I had been looking at it wrong. It wasn’t about finding my perfect career but simply using a career as a tool to create my happiest life. I wasn’t born with a destiny to work a 9-5 every day for 40 years. I’m not called to be a barista or a salesperson or a farmer. I’m just invited to live my life, and it is what my focus should be.

QUESTION 2

But what does that look like?

The only word I got after a lot of ruminating was freedom. That is all I want. A simple life where I don’t feel trapped; where I have what I need; just enough to be happy and to assist in making others happy.

QUESTION 3

How does this manifest?

The next idea that came up for me, the thing that awoke this curious spirit in me in the first place several years ago was the concept of intentionally choosing a traveling lifestyle. It made sense; nothing makes me happier than seeing new and beautiful things and being a stranger in new place. And what is freer than being able to go and do and see whatever I want?

But it’s different than that. It’s not exactly traveling in the sense of vacations and leisure that I want. To illustrate what I’m talking about, let me explain an idea that I have:

I have a theory that our happiest life is what our biggest dream was as a child. Some kids like to play house, and dream of having a family, of being mothers and fathers. Some kids dream of an important career, like doctors or firefighters. Some kids have wilder ideas, like being a Rockstar or princess. But even these shouldn’t be discounted, because maybe you are called to be a princess, or maybe wanting to be a princess is more of the idea that you want to lead or be in the public eye, that that is your calling. Do you see what I mean? Mine childhood fantasies and daydreams were a little different, and I never knew any other kids quite like me.

For every birthday that I can remember as a child, I always wished for the same thing: To go on an adventure. My favorite stories were ones about a nomadic person on a journey from one place to the next, either for a quest for some higher purpose or a search for self. Usually that person was solitary, sometimes there was a companion or companions, but the journey-theme was the same throughout. The feeling that these stories gave me was the same as I consumed them across genres and different types of media. Stories like The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Pilgrimage, Pokémon, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Alchemist, Doctor Who; all of these stories that I encountered during my young, formative years about someone moving from place to place, searching for meaning and seeing the world. When I wished at every birthday to “go on an adventure,” this was what I meant. I wanted my own hero’s journey.

It wasn’t until I started asking myself the questions that I did over the summer that I realized that I always had the answer to what I wanted from my life. I had known it since I was cognizant about my own autonomy as a human being and the role I held in my own story.

My dream as a child was a nomadic lifestyle. My own simple journey narrative, allowing me to pick up and move and learn and see and find community with others across the world.

And this is where I will pause until I know more about what this means for me. Because the questions continue: what kind of nomadic lifestyle do I want, and how will it work out?

What I will say for now is that I am taking some time to figure out these answers. I don’t think there’s one right way to do this, and true happiness is when you are constantly seeking, changing and growing. I have everything I need to try out any different kind of life.

The rest of my summer was spent brainstorming and researching. Van life, tiny houses, living in a car, sustainability, farm work, off-grid living, seasonal jobs, online jobs, working for 8 months and then quitting and traveling and then working again, etc. etc. etc. The possibilities were all fascinating to me and I saw a version of myself living out each one of them.

So, what did I end up deciding that would set the course of this upcoming year?

What I settled on was a happy medium, which would give me time to see how much I like a nomadic life but is relatively low-commitment. I’m going to go out for a couple years of slow traveling, working as I go, for as long as I can until I need to do something different. That’s all I got. I’m starting out in New Zealand. I’m leaving in three weeks and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.

For something that has an outcome that is completely up in the air at a time in my life when I no longer know where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in a year, I’m surprisingly calm. I’ve always found the most inner peace when I’m in outer chaos, so I’m in my element in this unknown. I’ve never done this before. Whatever happens is okay, though, because I finally feel like I’m living authentically, and this is what I desire above all else.

I’m just here to do these things:

Have fun

Leave a positive impact

See all that I can of the world, because it is a gift

Live all that I can of my life, because it is a gift

And that’s it from me this time around. I’ll be updating my website with blog posts about my endeavors, and soon you will see some YouTube videos here. As always, my Instagram will be updated pretty regularly with where I am/what I am doing, should you desire to know.