Hi And Stuff

You've got to start somewhere, so I'm starting here

Well, hello.

Maybe you used to follow my now-defunct blog So Many Places. Maybe you read The Yellow Envelope. Maybe I know you IRL and you feel obligated to subscribe. Whatever the reason, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. 

It’s intimidating to start a new blog/newsletter/Substack (what is Substack anyway) after so many years of relative silence. After all, there’s nothing scarier than the blank page, especially when I’m not quite sure what I’ll fill the blank page with. So Many Places, my previous home on ye ol’ internet, was a travel blog. Everything I shared there was united by that theme. But this is… something different. Because my life is different now. 

Still, one thing that hasn’t changed is my innate desire — my actual physical need — to write. I have missed writing. I have suffered without writing. Writing is my home, and since I put down my pen I have felt like a person adrift.

But I shall drift no longer, because now I’m anchored here. 

Since I’m not sure how to dive back into these waters, I guess I’ll start by telling you what I’ve been up to since So Many Places went offline:

Brian and I returned from our nearly three-year trip around the world in 2015. Later that year, our daughter was born.

In 2017 we moved to the mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina. 

Somewhere around that time So Many Places was hacked, and I fixed it, and then it was hacked again. The software I needed to keep those bastards from hacking it ad infinitum was expensive, so I let the blog go. 

In 2019 our son was born. 

We all know what happened in 2020. 

Also in 2020 I started a full time job after years of freelancing, but I kept a freelancing gig that began at 5:15 a.m. (something I still do to this day). Basically the confluence of these things: a new baby, a pandemic, a full time job, a freelance gig requiring me to wake before sunrise after — it’s worth noting — being up all night with said baby: it all just crushed me. I mean it absolutely wrecked me. More on that later.

During those years I didn’t read a book, much less put a word of my own down on paper.

I suspect now that my struggles were made all the worse because I stopped writing.

In 2021 I turned 40. To celebrate, Brian and I built a garden. This small act, which actually turned out to be quite the project, pulled me out of whatever dark hole I was in. I was building something again. And although I wasn’t building it with words, I felt myself wake up in bits, not unlike the way the flowers in our garden unfurl petal by petal in the morning summer sun. 

Our son, Arlo, in our garden. Can you believe this used to be a paved driveway? More on that later too.

From where I sit now, I’ve begun to think of those travel years — the ones I documented on So Many Places and in The Yellow Envelope — as an external adventure. Our travels gave me an outlet to express myself and all of the wonder I felt — and still feel — about existing in this beautiful, complicated world.

And I’ve begun to think of the years since returning as an internal adventure, no plane ticket required. I have learned a lot about myself as I grapple to fold the most essential parts of who I am into a life where I am also a parent, an employee, a spouse.

Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned over these past few years is that you can find yourself and lose yourself and find yourself all over again. Life isn’t some rocket blasting ever upward until its beautiful, final crescendo. It’s more like a ride on the Richter scale.

My real work has come in learning to love the small, gentle moments as much as I love the giant, anticipated-for-years adventures (and good God do I love those).

So I guess that’s what this newsletter will be about. About the adventure of life, big and small. About building a dream and losing track of it and chasing it down again. And also probably gardening. And traveling. Maybe parenting? Aging? Perimenopause?

As you can see I don’t have it all sorted out yet. For so long that has kept me from writing anything at all. But not anymore. 

I’m so glad to be back.

A note about this newsletter: I plan to publish once a week. For now, and maybe for always, this content will be free. But if you want to support my writing, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. If that’s not in the cards for you, I get it. Sharing this newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it would mean just as much.

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