Days like this.

It is with a full heart I write this. I am back. Back to the place and time where I was happiest I think, where I was the most inspired. It was a transition going from living with my bustling family to living on my own, going from a 50+ hour work week to studying in coffee shops, selling photography, and making friendships over punk rock bingo on Tuesday nights. At first it was both incredibly exciting and simultaneously scared the crap out of me. I felt up in the air, a little off center, not sure what was going on or where I was going. Then it all fell into place. Living on my own filled me with joy and authenticity. My life was more my own than I had ever expected. I felt saturated, inspired. I laughed and cried spontaneously and daily, finally ok to just feel how I felt. I felt deeply connected to my community and also totally ok to spend much of each day on my own. I learned never to be bored and always to be curious, always seeking a little mystery in my days. It was a few perfect months spent living the life I had been dreaming of for so long.

Then I did what I usually do. I changed it all up. I packed my life in my Volvo station wagon, drove west, my heart like a magnet drawing me ever towards ocean and mountains. Trading endless sky and plains and Rockies for tall buildings and bridges and trees and water. Once again my life was upside down, I couldn’t get to grips, found anxiety more present than peace. A tightness in my chest that wouldn’t go away.  A wall up, a disenchantment with what I had found, clinging too tightly to what I had left behind. Finally, after a summer of trying to figure it all out, I have found my stride. It feels like it did, same same but different. I am grateful for this, for the lightness, for the excitement, for the peace. Vancouver is becoming home. Another place of connection.  And the beauty of it all it that life is never really as you expected. We can make plans all we want and then suddenly it all changes again and that is where we learn. That is where we grow. That is how we get back to those 'Happiest months ever'.