Tiny Revolutions №109: Monkish and wandering

notes from journey that may or may not be a hero's journey

Vol de Héron, circa 1883 by Etienne-Jules Marey

Greetings from a rainy Memorial Day weekend. I am spending it in Atlanta, where I’ve been based since the beginning of the year. I say “based” because I’ve been gone so much. Costa Rica and upstate New York, which I wrote about last time. And then I’ve also been spending a lot of time down in St. Simon’s, a barrier island in Georgia about an hour south of Savannah.

For anyone paying attention, I’ve been wandering since last July, when I left LA after 18 years. The short story is that I knew I was ready to go, but I didn’t know what would be next, so I put my stuff in storage and set out to wander for a year and see where I landed. I spent last summer in Georgia and New York and last fall in Minneapolis, living down the street from my sister and her family. And then I migrated back south to Georgia, where, when I’m not traveling, I’ve been staying with my recently-widowed dad in the suburban house my family moved into when I was a senior in high school.

It’s been surprising to find myself enjoying it here, a place I left nearly 25 years ago and to which I never planned to return. I’m seeing this old place with fresh eyes — no longer as the place I had to escape so I could become the person I wanted to be, but as one of the places that made me into who I am. I never felt like I fit in here and I still don’t. I’ve grown eccentric and slightly feral in the way that 40+ women who never married or had kids can get, an anomaly in this bastion of the nuclear family. But I can appreciate what it has to offer. Space, and lush greenery, and all the suburban conveniences that I didn’t have access to in LA.

It’s only now becoming obvious to me how much of the past year has been about seeking comfort after decades in the metropolis (New York 2001-2005, LA 2005-2023). After all that time I was shocked to find myself still unmoored in the conventional sense. No husband, no mortgage, no babies, no job tying me to any one physical location. Which was especially glaring in the wake of the death of my mom, whose life was the polar opposite of mine in that she had all of those things in spades. I needed to be grounded in a way that I hadn’t been since basically childhood. It’s been good for me, spending this time around family and old friends. It feels deeply correct.

It also feels more and more like a stop along the way. To where? I don’t yet know! Atlanta is a much more appealing place than it was when I left nearly 25 years ago. Then I wanted to be a writer and to work in the media field, and that didn’t really exist here outside of broadcast media. So I had to go and find it. 

Cut to 2024, and things are different. You can work in media from anywhere, and I do. But goddamn, I miss the people. I miss the people so much. I miss being in rooms with others who are excited about the things that I’m excited about. I do that all the time on Zoom, but it’s not the same. It just isn’t.

And here’s the thing. I am so into my work, and the kind of work I am doing is an emerging field. It’s about raising consciousness through writing and coaching and spiritual teachings, but it’s also about organizing in ways that are less hierarchical and more collaborative. And as far as I can tell, I don’t see a lot of that happening here in Atlanta. Most of the people I work with are in the Hudson Valley and New York City, a place I’ve said for years I’d never return to unless I had a dream job.

Well, I don’t have a dream job. But I do have some pretty amazing collaborators.

It’s a strange place to be, nearing the half century mark and feeling called to return to a crowded, expensive, exhausting city. But I also think, being able to operate from a place of wholeness and agency there might make me way more able to enjoy the spoils of it than I ever did before. When I first moved to New York City at 24, I was very much looking for the city to make me into something — the person I needed to escape Atlanta to become. So the question I am asking myself now is, would returning with a clearer understanding of who I am and what I’m here on earth to do be supportive in this current stage of life?

I truly don’t know, but I suspect the people, the opportunities, the culture might give me energy. And that might make this the smartest possible thing I could do for myself at this stage of my life, where everything feels like it takes so much fucking energy!

It also feels like the kind of risk I’m more prepared to take than I was a year ago. When I left LA people would say, “You can go anywhere! Where will you go?” But I was afraid of being alone in a new place. I needed to be around my family and soak up that elemental kind of love and belonging, if that makes sense. The kind you’re born into, if you’re lucky. I still need the love and belonging but I’m also feeling like the kind of love and belonging that I need more of now is something I have more work to do to build for myself.

Which is scary! But you know what is also scary? Discovering you’re relying on scraps from a table an old version of you used to dine at. I’m starting to feel ready for a new table and a new meal.

It’s funny, when I write this all out it seems so straightforward. When you’re both unencumbered and financially resourced in the ways I am — and which most people are not — it’s almost like you have an obligation to exercise your ability to go anywhere, try anything. Like, if not me, then who? But there’s a cost to it. You do drink up new experiences and expand your horizons in ways that are basically impossible when you’re rooted somewhere. But on the other side of that, it’s hard to make new relationships when you are on the move. It’s hard to feel like you belong anywhere.

I feel that a lot, 11 months into my nomad period. A sense of being caught between worlds. Enjoying it just enough to keep it going. But also being cognizant that this period must someday come to an end. But when?

The “when” part is what’s trickiest for me. If you have been reading this newsletter for a while, you might know I face a lot of what one might call mental headwinds that I am constantly working on clearing. And on a bad day, fear and shame are so present! “You should be settled at your age.” (Shame.) “You should be more focused on preparing for retirement, growing equity in a house, etc.” (Fear.)

At their more insidious, the voices are more like “You’re a shiftless loser who cannot commit to anything.” (Shame.) “If you don’t just grow up and settle down, you will die broke and alone in a tent somewhere!!!” (That’s fear, what a guy.)

And of course all the positive narratives are in the mix, too. e.g. “I have an amazing life and people all over the world to love and work and play with.” “When you’re ready, the next step always becomes clear.”

Different things feel true on different days. I just do my best to dance with them and put more credence in the positive stories. In a world where I control so little, that is what I do have control over – the stories I tell myself.

So the story I’m telling myself lately is that the most important thing I can do is let go of all the shame and disappointment I’ve harbored about being so late in life and not really feeling like I’ve found my place. It’s OK to be that way. It’s probably way more common than we think.

Maybe it was just always supposed to be like this so I could sit here and write this letter to you. You who are not where you want to be. You who don’t understand it and have fought so hard against it, and tried to be who you thought you should be instead of loving who you are, exactly how you are right here and now. 

It is so easy to say that to others and so hard to say that to yourself. In the spirit of taking this all the way, in case it is not clear, I feel extremely naked talking about this. Here I am, 47, rich in so many things – wonderful friends, a supportive family, a vocation, a career I love, etc – and I still feel like it’s not enough. Like I need more. It’s exhausting to pretend otherwise. I have a lot and I’ve tried so hard to make myself OK with it and it’s just not OK. I want more. 

So the travels continue; in fact they feel like a bet I am placing on myself. That I am worthy of finding a place to settle in that I deeply love and want to build a life in. That it’s OK to want more and to go after it, even when you already have so much. And strangely there’s a bit of the hero’s journey here. Coming back to the east coast with a new perspective, a new set of skills, a new foundation of strength and self-knowledge. It’s all coming full circle.

So while I’d originally planned to be ready to settle somewhere by July, the self-storage bills and the digital nomading will continue. I think I’m gonna head north for a while, see what happens.

On a related note!

I’m heading to Japan later this week, where I'll spend four nights visiting my Zen teacher at Toshoji monastery in Okayama prefecture.

I'm hoping to master Zen by the end of it all, which you're not really supposed to say out loud. But nothing gives me as much as the practice does, or gives me more to offer others. Even when I struggle because it's boring or tedious or not the sexy new thing, it always feels like coming home. I am wildly grateful to be on this path of practice, which I only stumbled upon in my early 40s. I can't see how I'll ever reach the end of it, which is miraculous to me, a person who historically has always tired of everything after a while and moved on.

My first Zen teacher used to occasionally make remarks that he wanted to be a master early on in his Zen practice too, and he had some wistfulness about it because he said after a while you can't escape it. I can sort of see that now, and in the year since I left three years of residence at

Angel City Zen Center

I've allowed myself to stray to see what it felt like, but I keep coming back.

Excited to keep walking along to see what happens. And if you’re curious about what I’ve learned in five years of practice, you can listen to a talk I gave about it recently here.

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Finally, an Invitation

I mentioned my amazing collaborators above, and I was referring to the folks at

Foster

, my writing collective. We’ve made a lot of progress in making what we’re doing more legible to the world, including introducing a new website that fully details who we are, what we do, and who we’d like to join us.

If you’re a stuck writer, a writer who’s out of practice, a wannabe writer, or a person who just knows they have a lot of untold stories they’d like to get out, I think we have something to offer you. Come join one of our free Writing Circles on Zoom, for starters. I’ve got one a fire-themed one coming up Tuesday, June 11 (RSVP here). Or if you’re interested in going deeper, join one of our Cohorts.

We have a Cohort starting next Monday, June 3 called Foundations, which serves as an introduction to Foster’s ecology of practices. The goal is help you write from a more embodied, emotionally-rich place, navigate more directly to truths worth sharing, and move beyond various forms of resistance to publish courageously and find like-minded others with which to share your work. It’s work that’s well worth doing and I’ve seen it change lives over and over again. If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to reply or comment with any questions.

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Phew, was that a lot? That felt like a lot. Thanks for being here, as ever.

😘

Sara

p.s. Tiny Revolutions is free to read but if you’d like to support my work, please share this with someone who’d appreciate it, or just like this post!