How quickly time flies when the world around you has completely changed. Figuratively, yes, but I mean literally, sans hyperbole. Just three weeks ago I packed up my life and moved from one coast to another sunnier, warmer, slower one. I left my little family, a job I dedicated nearly a decade to, a home I nested and made my own. On September 30 I landed on LA soil, and on October 1st, officially moved into my apartment. It was an auspicious day to abandon comfort: my mom reminded me that it was the Chinese Moon Festival, a day where families reunited to celebrate a year of harvest and hard work. Though we were apart, she made sure to add, it was for a good reason. I was embarking on a new adventure. Years of keeping my head down had given me the privilege to stick my neck out. To wander.
It’s hard not to believe that this new chapter was fortuitous. Again, the moon was brought up: Sophie Ward, veteran blogger and author of The Beginning of an Inexplicable Journey, emailed back that afternoon. Happy full moon (and moving!), she wished me. My copy of her first book would be posted to my new address soon.
The paperback arrived a week later, imbued with what felt like the magic of the full moon and new beginnings. I firmly believe that books find you and not the other way around; Ward’s words came when I needed to make sense of this rebirth. It was as if my new life as a bona fide Los Angelean (my Californian license and vote-by-mail ballot came a few days later) was now being narrated by a wiser—no, omniscient—voice. She wrote what I could not yet verbalize. I devoured each chapter with hope, greed, light, calm, excitement. All feelings that could only be called upon by someone who seemed to see the world the way my eyes did and somehow who saw into my soul, too.
The first chapter opened with a sentiment so poignant:
“I was intensely aware of how everything looked the same, and yet felt vaguely different.”
When I first ordered my copy of her book, we were in the midst of a state-mandated lockdown. I had no idea that in a few short months, my life would completely change—only that I felt different. Uneasy in my skin, restless even. At first I attributed it cabin fever (even though in my heart of hearts, I knew that solitude wasn’t the source of my inquietude. Complacency was, as was a stalemate of inspiration). Had The Beginning of an Inexplicable Journey come to me in July, I would’ve felt discouraged by my predicament. Instead, the book came when I was ready for it. She took a page out of my thoughts:
“These days though, I couldn’t wait to be free, which really meant that I wanted to wander around changing myself all the time—not trying to change—but just being a change… But this I know now. This is how I like to be, wandering, stepping into myself, becoming a different version of the same soul with every step along the pavement, sending the pressures of gravity bubbling upwards through vein and synapse. […] I wanted everyone to be freed from the rules of information that told them this was it. I wanted people to know the other side of the moon as well, the other ways life could be.”
So, I chose the other side of the country. Here I am.
“I can decide who to be tomorrow. Who to come out as. What to see in the mirror, who to be my mirror. I can choose what to do, what will satisfy my soul enough that I grow out of my shell. James Bryant Conant once said: ‘Behold the Turtle! He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.’ When the future feels inspiring, I am inspired. When the present feels inspired I am inspired… I like surprising myself… being exceptional and wonder full, full of wonder. Expressing not only what I feel, but what I am.
(What I am!)“
. . .
xx
Your turn. Thoughts?