Welcome to another week of travel. This week, we’re in Los Osos, where it’s cold in the morning, briefly warm during the day and then immediately cold as soon as the sun starts to set.
“Have you done anything exciting since Hearst Castle?”
My heart sank when I received this perfectly innocent text last week. I tried to form an interesting response but...no. We’d worked, we’d watched some TV, we’d made some phone calls to family back home. And that was it.
I could feel the shame creeping in. We’re doing this amazing travel. We’re on the coast of California, we’re right by the ocean. We should be kayaking, and paddleboarding, and doing more rock climbing, and probably several hikes, and eating great food. We should be living life to the fullest, all day, every day!
As my therapist would say, I was should-ing all over myself.
It’s wonderful to be living our lives like this right now, to be traveling the country and having new experiences. Everyone keeps telling us how cool it is.
But the truth is, it doesn’t always feel cool. Our weekdays are still spent working our regular jobs, so that hasn’t changed at all. We’re still homebodies who love a good night in. We don’t want to go out every night, or rise every Saturday morning with the sun. And honestly, right now, we’re really tired.
Working through the pandemic has been a strange, double-edged-sword experience. At the beginning, it was such a relief to continue working, to keep a paying job, when so much of the world was shutting down. I think Aaron and I were the only members of our immediate families who didn’t stop working for at least two weeks (except maybe his stepmom and stepsisters, all nurses). We had no commute, we had our desks, we stayed inside—we were safe, we were working, we were lucky.
But after a while, all the feelings started to hit. Fear. Depression. Anxiety. I took a day off from work because I just couldn’t stop crying. We worked through exponentially increasing infection and death rates. We worked through a stressful election cycle. We worked through nights and mornings with a five-month-old puppy. On January 6, I was thiiiiis close to sending out an email to our entire company asking, “Are we expected to work through the coup?” Through all of it, we just worked.
And we got burned out. We’ve all read about it, we’ve heard it discussed ad nauseam. I quit my job before I had the next gig lined up because I was absolutely done. I needed rest.
After a few months of freelancing, I started to feel a little like myself again. The great thing about freelancing is that it can be work hard, rest hard. Work hard on a project for 4-6 weeks, get it done, and then you’ve got 2-4 weeks of time to yourself before you find the next gig. It’s scary, and I sometimes let the anxiety of that keep me from enjoying the time I have, but once you get used to the rhythm, it’s nice. I finished a screenplay in those weeks off. I read books. I got more sleep.
And then we decided to upend our lives, sell our home, and hit the road. You know, just in case we were getting too comfortable.
We have a friend who has also been traveling around for the past year. We asked for his advice on packing before we left, but he also gave us a piece of advice that I keep returning to again and again.
He told us to be kind to ourselves. To recognize that, no matter how exciting this is, it’s also a huge life transition. It’s a major change, and even the best changes can be incredibly hard. So when we find ourselves annoyed with each other, or feeling off, to take a breath and remember that our lives have been turned upside down. And that it’s okay to not be super excited all the time.
I knew it was good advice when he said it, but man, I really feel it now. I feel it on the days I get restless and annoyed that Aaron doesn’t want to go somewhere with me. I feel it when I press snooze on my alarm, rolling back over to sleep because I don’t have to work early anyway, and wondering if I’m a terrible adult for not jumping out of bed and doing sunrise yoga followed by a green smoothie.
And I feel it when I realize that we’re still grieving. I haven’t written much about rehoming Darcy because, honestly, it still hurts. There are still days that I cry, wishing we’d kept her, or wishing we could’ve given her the life that she needed. I check the rescue organization’s Facebook page daily to see if she’s been adopted and moved out of her foster’s home. I know that we made the right choice for all three of us, for all of our current lifestyle needs, but fuck if I don’t hate it at the same time.
I feel time differently now. A month feels both shorter and longer than it used to. On the one hand, it’s nothing. A handful of weekends for us to explore each city. On the other hand, it’s so distinct and long—Portland feels like a lifetime ago. It’s been forever, and it’s been no time at all.
It’s easy to forget what a month really is. Thirty days. That’s it. It’s really not long. And in the middle of a life transition? In the middle of grief? It’s nothing.
As I’m writing this, it’s been 42 days since we took Darcy to her foster home and said goodbye.
It’s been 65 days since we closed the sale on our townhouse.
It’s been 84 days since we actually moved out of our townhouse, the first home we’d owned together. Our home for three years, and our occasional cage for the decades we experienced in 2020 and 2021.
84 days since we officially hit the road and traveled to our first Airbnb.
It’s a long time, but it’s also no time.
In the past 84 days, we've done a lot of exciting things. Exciting and heartbreaking and scary and fun things.
But we’re also tired. We’re emotionally tapped out. Sometimes we’re overwhelmed. Sometimes we’re really annoyed with each other.
So in the past two weeks since we went to Hearst Castle? We've relaxed, cried, read, watched comfort TV, and done nothing exciting.
We’ve rested.
And that's as important as anything else.
What else is going on? This week:
We’re continuing The Midnight Club on Netflix. I think I mentioned it last week, but we’re still watching it, still enjoying it.
I finally started reading Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe and I love it. Love. It.
I finished reading A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos and immediately ordered the next book in the series.
We took a belay class at the rock climbing gym! It was much easier than I was expecting, and we’re going to go back to take the belay test so we can officially belay for each other in this gym (we weren’t allowed to do it in the same time, to make sure you can retain the information).
Y’all are people that need a home to come to after work! Homes have many corners for each to have their own thoughts lives whatever then come back together in the middle. Love y’all🥰🥰