Wait... How'd You Afford That?

One of my favorite podcasts is from the team at WNYC and NPR, called Death, Sex, and Money. Anna Sale hosts conversations about, as she says, "Things we think about a lot and need to talk about more." They do a lot of talking about... well... death, sex, and money. The things we really want to talk about are, often, the things we're definitely not supposed to talk about. 

Let's talk about something we're not supposed to talk about. One of my best friends, a person who has known me for half our lives, a friend I can call at any time for any reason at all, asked me how in the hell I'm able to afford this little journey halfway around the world. My dearest friend had no idea how I came up with the money, and if she didn't then you sure as hell don't. Instagram glamorizes all this, and we don't know - and don't always need to know - the way a person affords to live. But I am committed to making sure this project is honest. I will not let this be a place where people compare their reality to what they think my reality is- and find themselves lacking. There's plenty of that online. I'm here to tell the truth, and I won't ask others to be transparent if I'm not willing to do the same. So, let's settle in, grab a glass of wine, and get a little uncomfortable.

When I was 22 and making "real money" after college for the first time, I started a long term savings account. (22 year old me also bought a house. She was far more financially stable than 30 year old me, I assure you.) I cannot thank 22 year old me enough for making the decision to stash some money away. When 26 year old me sold that house, a little over $5000 went into long term savings. And by long term savings, I mean retirement. It was a retirement account. I wasn't going to tell you that, because it makes the next part of the story seem reckless. Did I mention 22 year old me was the financially stable one? 

Anyways, 30 year old me has a car payment and a camper payment, and some credit card debt because of a couple really lean years when some things just had to go on the card. She also doesn't have a reliable source of income because she's a yoga teacher and, despite the appearances of glamour and spandex dreams, we HUSTLE, y'all. Your yoga teacher usually makes between $30-$50 teaching those group classes you love so much. If that's his or her only job, you do the math. I remember one of my friends, a well known and dearly loved yoga teacher in Nashville, once told me, "I would love to break the $30k/ year barrier." This person was 32. She had been teaching for years. If you practice yoga at a studio, there is a very good chance you make more than your instructor makes.

I'm not mad about it, I chose to do work that filled my heart but not my bank account. All of this is simply to make it clear that, no, I am not independently wealthy. I am not even debt free. I haven't had a salary in years and I haven't had health insurance since 2016. I am not a person who travels because she is rich.

I am a person who travels because I spend any spare money I do happen to have on travel. I don't shop. My closet looks very much the same as it did 2, 3, 4 years ago. I try not to be too attached to things. If I need to sell stuff to buy a flight, I sell stuff. I collect miles on my Southwest card. I have a couple of savings accounts and put $25-$50 away each week, depending on how much wiggle room I have in my budget. I took a side job at a bakery. I have spent years learning how to work the flight booking system. And, in order to go on this once in a lifetime adventure, I damn near cashed out that retirement account. 

That's right. I did the one thing you're never, ever supposed to do. I took out almost (almost) all of the money from that retirement account to have some money to live on while I work on this project. I believe in it. I don't know if it will generate any income, but I can't not do this. This dream chose me. It has to actualize or it will leave me and find someone else to make it. I can't very well have that.

I have had to hold my beliefs about money with an open hand. Sometimes, I'll have plenty of it. Sometimes, I won't have much at all. I can't let the amount of money I do or do not have at a given moment determine how fully I live. Trust me, my fear has insisted many times, most often at about 4am, that I have lost my mind and I'm headed for financial ruin and WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?! I have battled serious shame about credit card debt. I have gone toe to toe with the expectations 22 year old me had of 30 year old me- and I almost always walk away from that conversation at least a little bruised. 22 year old me was smart and careful, but she was also pretty scared. She wanted to do all the right things in the right order, and do them as quickly as possible so everyone would know how grown up she was. 30 year old me is brave. She's a little reckless, but it's because she has seen fear get her absolutely nowhere. She's tired of nowhere. She's done caring what people think, and she's fully committed to following her guts and her feet. 

Maybe 40 year old me will be smart and careful and brave all at the same time. We'll have to wait and see. For now, for those of you who have seen these posts and the Instagram shots and wondered what I did to afford 10 days in NYC and a trip around the world... Well, kids. I did what your parents will tell you not to ever, ever do. I'm quite literally going for broke in order to chase this dream and birth this thing I feel growing in my heart.

Also, and this matters, I'm staying at a kind and generous friend's apartment while he travels, himself. All I had to pay for was a flight and food. I have purchased many groceries, fam. I am not eating out every night in the fabulous and fabulously expensive NYC. I'm headed to a city in Thailand where you can live for $500-$600/ month- including lodging. This is a budget trip, ya'll. Nobody is staying at the Four Seasons, right now.

So that's how I'm able to afford it. Why spill these beans? Why talk about money? Because it is so important to me you know this is space where the truth matters. I know what it feels like to feel inadequate, like the dreams you want to chase are out of reach because of logistics or money or fear. The only difference between me a few years ago and me now is I'm simply refusing to stay afraid. Being afraid didn't get me anywhere. Hoarding my money didn't make me rich. I'm shifting my priorities. Right now I'm at a time when I don't have a whole lot of money. But I am so, so happy. I am alive and excited, my time is my own, I have a vision and project, and I am so happy. 

I also don't have any children or adults depending on the money I bring in. So, if I fuck this up, the stakes aren't terribly high.

But if I nail it.. y'all... if I nail it?! It will all have been worth it.

Here's to taking chances and telling the scary, ugly, beautiful truth.

Why now?

All around us is bad news. It’s the easiest thing in the world to go online and find chaos after tragedy after seemingly endless disaster. I can hardly open the News app on my phone anymore without slamming the phone down in a rage. It’s tiresome, this constant worry over the state of things. I’ve spoken with more people this year who have developed anxiety since the last election cycle than who haven’t.

Here’s the deal about bad news, though: It’s not the only news. Is it what we hear the most often? Sure. Is it what advertisers want us to focus on? Absolutely. How else would they convince us we need the hundreds of products and services they’ve designed? If the world is more safe than not, and if people are already of great intrinsic worth and inherent dignity exactly as we are and nothing can take that away, what reason do you and I have to buy that extra life insurance policy or the home alarm system that can also order cloth diapers and play Bruno Mars? As long as media conglomerates and politicians and advertising companies control the narrative, we can be scared into just about anything. As long as we’re scared of the world around us, we can be manipulated into doing and believing just about anything. As long as we’re divided into our camps of “Us” and “Them”, as convinced of our own righteousness as we are of their blatant stupidity, we’re very easy to control. Those who control the narrative control everything.

Friends, it’s time for us to write a new story. It’s time for us to take back the narrative.

Here’s what I love about us. We drive me absolutely bananas, don’t get me wrong. We hurt each other every day and we say awful things on the internet but, somehow, in the midst of all the war and poverty and racial injustice and mass shootings and authoritarianism and rape and moral bankruptcy, we still manage to live.

We still make music in living rooms.

We still watch little ones jump in rain puddles.

We still plant flowers in gardens.

We curl up by fires with books.

We chase fireflies in the summer.

We build new tables out of old wood.

We put on plays and musicals that make absolutely no money but bring great joy.

We make soup for sick friends.

We jump out of airplanes.

We hop in the car and drive through the countryside on a Saturday just to see the leaves change from green to blazing red.

We help our kids with their algebra homework.

We weep to bury our loved ones and laugh over memories of them.

We have hard conversations with people we don’t understand because we love them.

We apologize.

We forgive.

We put quarters in gumball machines because it reminds us of being young.

We surf.

We skateboard.

We take naps on sofas.

We adopt pets from shelters.

We walk through the woods because they’re there.

We pick up trash from the sidewalk because it’s the right thing to do.

We eat stinky cheese and drink sparking wine.

We call our mothers.

We try to remember to write ‘Thank You’ notes, and we always feel better when we do.

We give gifts on birthdays, and on holidays, and, sometimes, just because we want to.

We buy tiny gourds and arrange them on tables for no other reason than they look nice there.

We turn wool into sweaters and blankets and itty bitty socks for newborn babies.  We play instruments and turn notes into songs.

We tell our stories.

We live.

It takes so little light fill a dark room. People, even when we’re really enthusiastically screwing things up, are capable of generating such bright light.

We are born resilient.

Hate is learned. Fear of the people around us is learned.

I believe we can unlearn those things. I believe the most radical thing we can do is introduce ourselves to one another. I believe the way we make the world a place of light again is not by constantly complaining about the darkness, but by realizing we have had access to the light all along.

Thanksgiving, 2017. Releasing light, gratitude, and dreams.

It’s us. It's ours to share. The light is not lessened when we share it, but like a match to a candle the light multiplies and spreads. 

Thank you for all the ways you are light in the world. Keep opening yourself up. Keep living. You can't possibly know when your light will ignite someone else's. There are so many of us, friends. Keep shining.

The Beginning

In a way, this project is a beginning. But in lots of other ways, it's simply the next right thing in a story full of stops and starts. I've never been a person for whom normal was going to work out. My "career path" is more of a meandering mountain cilmb, sometimes trailing along little sparkling streams with baby deer and butterflies, but more often switching back and forth and up and down and around until my hamstrings cramp and my boob sweat and armpit sweat become one inner tube of stank wrapped around my middle. I almost never know what's coming next. I have spent the past decade or so following my gut to the next right thing, seeing what patterns emerge in my life, identifying what makes me feel alive, and trying my damnedest to turn those next steps into some sort of a living. 

This project is the birth of what's been growing in me ever since approximately November 9, 2016. I'm tired of not knowing what to do to make the world a little less insane. I know exactly what to do. I am nervous and a little afraid, but I know exactly what I'm going to do. I am going to meet you, sweet strangers of the world. I am going to meet you and listen to your stories of resilience and share them with whoever will hear us, because I think the collective truth of our lived experiences is what will save us from a world of misrepresentation and alternative facts. There is a truth with more depth and breadth and life than the facts- even the right ones- and I'm going to seek out that truth and share it. It's in our stories. It's in our moments of empowerment and courage and sacrifice and forgiveness and mercy and love, and it exists inside us and in between us- always. 

This project is about meeting strangers and introducing you to some of the amazing people in my life, and sharing all of our stories of resilience in one place. This project is about making the world better. It's about good news. It's about telling the truth. There are people facing their pain and their fear and anxiety about the world, and living luminous and bold lives of creation right where they are. I'm going to find them and introduce them to you. My hope is that their stories will remind you of your own bright and bold life, and point you back to your own resilience.

Here's what it will look like: There will be a podcast where I'll sit down with some incredibly normal and totally resilient humans and we'll talk about hard, beautiful things. There will be an instagram where I'll post pictures of people from all over the world with little glimpses of their stories of resilience. There will be a blog where I'll tell the truth as best I know it. There will be you and me and all of us sharing our best, hardest, most beautiful, awful, life giving and empowering stories about how and who we are in the world. We will tell the truth. We will make the world a little less insane. We will BE the good news we've been waiting to hear. And when we fall and fail and lose our way, we will begin again. Together. Always.