Finding Flow in the Unknown

Resilience. Trust. Bravery. Flexibility. These are just a few of the characteristics required to leave behind secure employment for adventure and the unknown. You can infuse adventure into your life while keeping a full time job by planning big trips for your few weeks of annual vacation. You can also focus on micro-adventures that happen in your back yard, explorations that last an evening or a weekend. For those of you who have chosen the path less traveled and given up the security of a job or a home in exchange for adventure travel in your van, by bike, or by foot, how is that going for you? What are the major challenges and fears you face?

I left my full time teaching job in May of 2019 and I know some wondered how long it would take for me to get “bored” or to miss more structure in my life. In some ways the answer has turned out to be 2.5 years, but there are circumstances none of us could have foreseen that have drastically altered my experience, but I should let the story unfold…

I’ve written here about the bikepacking trip Jesse and I did in New Mexico in September and how I then stayed on the road, mostly in NM, living out of my car and exploring new places by bike and foot. At first glance this sounds like most of my summers for the past ten years; however, this time it felt different. Part of the difference was definitely missing Jesse. When I was used to doing these trips alone, I didn’t mind all the solo time, but now that I have experienced the shared joy of more and more trips with Jesse it now seems less fun without him. Additionally, the days are much shorter and the nights get colder in September and October, resulting in12-13 hours in the back of my car every night. Perhaps if I had a van this would not be an issue, but in a car where I can’t quite sit upright it makes for long nights. Finally, my personal behaviors are still greatly impacted by my desire not to contract, nor spread, Covid. In the past when living this way I would spend my rest days (non hiking/biking/driving days) in libraries and coffee shops. As of this writing I still don’t spend much unnecessary time indoors with folks of unknown vaccination status and not having this outlet for a change of pace and human interaction was also decreasing my enjoyment. Reasons, or perhaps excuses, aside, for the first time since leaving my job I was feeling the dreaded B word: Boredom. Generally, I don’t traffic much in boredom given the number of things I want to learn to do and books available to read; for example, during the pandemic I was learning Spanish, practicing my banjolele, gardening, and building things. Step one of tackling this feeling of boredom, or perhaps ennui is a better descriptor, was to get going with my (still very rudimentary) Spanish practice again. That helped some, but it was not a complete solution.

Not long after coming to the conclusion that, at least for now, I desired more structure in my life again I happened upon a job opening with a small Santa Barbara nonprofit. It advertised a nice mixture of work from home, varied tasks, time outside, and most importantly, a connection to a community and local resources that are very important to me. While I had some trepidation about my readiness for full-time work, I was called to this and applied while on the road. Things moved quickly with a first and second phone interview, at which time I decided to return to Santa Barbara earlier than planned with the hope that this job would come to fruition, but even if it didn’t, I felt ready to be “home” with Jesse and reintegrate into the local community. In the end I did not get the job, but I had started down a path that I wanted to explore more thoroughly and take a deep look at my current goals and preferences.

Long bike rides are a great way to process your thoughts and feelings! The next set of interspersed photos are from a weekend ride Jesse and I did from the house a couple of weeks ago. This single overnight involved sampling two different hot springs, just a bike ride away!

After not getting the full-time job I started reaching out to all my Santa Barbara contacts for possible part-time work. Several viable opportunities presented themselves and yet when I tried to move any of them forward progress inevitably slowed to a crawl. After weeks of nudging things along I finally received confirmation that I would be hired to teach a section of Human Physiology in the spring, back at SBCC where I taught for ten years. Though I haven’t “officially” been hired through the HR office yet, talk about slow to respond… I was also told by another nonprofit that I was a great candidate for a position they wanted to create, a month or more later they are still creating… Seriously, everything has been moving at a snail’s pace. Even my effort to start volunteering at the local nonprofit bike co-op again took a few weeks to get off the ground. Trying to nudge my life in a certain direction while maintaining a state of calm and joy throughout this big period of unknown has been challenging at times. I remind myself that even though it would be good, even great, to have some income flow, I’m ok for now if it doesn’t happen. I’m just so budget conscious that it is difficult for me to spend *any* money when I don’t have either recent income or a near-future income plan. Trying to stay in a flow state in my adventures, my relationship, and my friendships has been more challenging as my emotions deal with various forms of the unknown and rejection.

I’m also not done adventuring yet, neither on the micro nor the macro level! I especially love it when I can combine adventure and having an income. Next summer I have a couple of possibilities I am considering, one of which is returning to Oakridge. After being chased out early by fire last summer, I do not feel finished with that chapter of my life. I still have so much to learn about working on bikes, I made such wonderful friends there that I miss greatly, and there are so many trails to ride!! The take home is that I have competing interests in my life right now: career goals in the nonprofit sector, making money, more time here in Sant Barbara with Jesse, adventuring in far of places for months at a time, volunteering, and feeling like part of a community all compete for priority in my life. Trying to balance these desires and goals makes it more difficult to secure progress in any one direction (for example, trying to get a job with a local nonprofit if I want to leave the area this coming summer), meanwhile I continue to breathe, explore, and look within myself for some combination of the most desired and reasonable path forward.

In the more tangible realm, let’s get back to that bikepacking trip Jesse and I did a couple of weeks ago! We love adventures from home, even if they all start with almost 4,000 feet of climbing, but by midafternoon on day 1 we arrived at Little Caliente Hot Springs:

Our choice of a campground came with consequences though! After dinner we were snuggled in our tent for the night when I heard some critter outside the tent, so I grabbed my light and scanned outside the door, trying to catch a glimpse of the curious or hungry guest. I didn’t see an animal, but realized one of my soft sided water bottles sitting on the picnic table was draining water onto the ground at an alarming rate — alarming both because we were dry camping, meaning the water with us was all we had to get us through the next morning and possibly even the entire ride home, and because there was no way the bottle had spontaneously sprung a leak that big. Since the bottle hadn’t been knocked to the ground, or even knocked over, that meant someone had bitten a hole in it! I’ve used these collapsible plastic bags for years and never had an animal mess with one. I jumped out of the tent to save the remaining water and after transferring it to another bag I settled back into bed. A bit later, with Jesse sound asleep again, I hear an animal walk right next to the tent. Again I grab my headlamp and this time I catch the animal in action — a fox!! It lightly jumped up on the table and proceeded to climb all over our bikes, investigating for food, completely unfazed that I was essentially shining a spot light on it. Unsurprisingly, Jesse was now awake and I asked him to hold my light while I tried to take a photo, but we never quite got it right, so unfortunately I do not have a photo of this beautiful, if mischievous, animal for you. It was a quite large fox and the behavior was a bit disconcerting; it should not have been too acclimatized to people given that this campground has been closed to vehicle access for years and thus is highly underutilized. Hopefully it was not a case of rabies making the fox so brave. Regardless, after we made a bit more noise it ran off and I did what I always do when I want to sleep more than I want to be alert to my surroundings – I put in my earplugs and slept through the rest of the night.

Following the exciting night we were up early, enjoying the morning chill in the air, and our usual breakfast of oatmeal when I realized something was awry. Each night when I set up camp I put my bag of bathroom supplies (trowel, TP, and an additional ziplock for packing out used TP) next to the tent ready for morning use. As we were enjoying breakfast I realized the toiletry bag was not next to the tent! Did I forget to take it off my bike the night before? A quick search indicates that it is not on my bike; it was stolen during the night!! Thanks to the knowledge gained by my fights with Weka birds in New Zealand and dealing with their single focus in life –to steal your stuff — I figured there was a good chance that the fox (presumed guilty) had not gone far with my bag before realizing it had no value to them. Jesse and I began to scour the campground and finally about 150 feet from the tent I found it. The outer bag had been chewed up, but otherwise everything was accounted for, which was good, because this wasn’t just any trowel, but my super awesome titanium trowel: The Deuce of Spades! 🙂 Between the water bag and the trowel it almost turned into a very expensive night of free camping. Emergency averted we packed up and headed out for a soak.

The following weekend was an adventure of a more civilized sort: heading up to the central coast for a somewhat annual ladies weekend with my dear science friends where we rented a house and enjoyed local hikes and neighborhood walks, a lovely dose of urban wildlife was included.

In my continuing effort to broaden my skill set and make useful things for our house I recently built the small shelf below. This closet normally has a small dresser on the front left and piles of stuff on the right that quickly devolve into chaos each time they are organized. This shelf fits behind the dresser and allows us to use the space in a much more efficient and organized manner. As usual, it is made from completely upcycled/found wood.

This update has been a long time coming because it is much easier to write if I wait for things to settle into place and describe the outcome; however, over the past two months it has become clear that I am going to have to find my state of flow while experiencing turbulence. I also think it is important to share the truth of my journey and not just the (hopefully) joyful final products. Thanks for reading and caring about the path of my life, my wish is that the journey itself continues to be full of joy and meaning!