I started playing the game.
That is the short response I give to people who ask me how I ended up in Denali, Alaska. But as I am sitting in my little tiny cabin I share with my best friend, typing on a wood-crafted table, accompanied by a few too many dead misquotes smashed into our wall, a stack of letters waiting to be sent as my phone lays in a drawer, and the sun warming up our space, I know it is so much deeper than this surface level response.
I’ll be honest with you, this decision was not a result of some earth-shattering realization. I did not wake up one day and hear the mountains calling me. I did not storm into my job and quit on the spot. The decision to come here was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make because it required me to sacrifice just about everything. I almost didn't come, I almost backed out. I over-thought this decision to the point of exhaustion. I am not someone who has ever been able to walk about from something easily, and I was about to walk away from it all. No matter how much I doubted it, though, I would still lay awake some nights picturing a version of myself who was released from this cage she felt trapped in, standing on top of a mountain instead of under one, feeling free and awakened.
Fast forward a few months, I finally got to meet that version of myself.
I read in one of Brianna Weist’s masterpieces:
“If you’re not doubting your next step, it's not the right step. I know that seems wrong, as though the most corrupt thing would absolve any doubt, any fear, or any worry from your mind. The more right it is, the more you’re going to have an unconscious, emotional, and often embodied reaction. You’re scared because you care. You’re doubting because this actually means something to you. You’re nervous because it’s unfamiliar. You’re finally choosing something you actually desire, you’re confronting the limiting beliefs that have held you back from it all this time, and you’re actually putting something on the line for once. You’re no longer content to follow someone else’s success script. You’re no longer just passively floating through your existence. You’re making a choice, and that comes with discomfort, that comes with responsibility, and often, that comes with fear. Too many people won’t leap because they’re afraid of that initial jolt, but they also never learn to spread their wings, and they never arrive anywhere else.”
g o o s e b u m p s
Life might give you lemons but it gave me to page 122 of This Is How You Heal.
Alaska, here I come.
I have every desire to skip over this decision-making process and just jump to the part where I got rid of almost everything I owned and packed the 2013 Honda Pilot with the remains I kept, but I feel like it would be doing a disservice to whoever reads this to not emphasize the challenge of this decision. I only bring this up in hopes that if you are reading this and debating taking the jump, I challenge you to lean into it just a little bit more. Allow yourself to get just a little more uncomfortable. Allow your life to look just a little bit more in line with your most enjoyable daydreams. Allow change. Allow discomfort. Allow pain. Jump on your terms, but please jump. Life is a game, you can start playing it whenever you’re ready.
The second challenging topic to attempt to cover is Vitality. For the last year and a half, that job was my life. It was my identity, it was my passion, it was my friendships and free time and focus. I was known as the coffee girl. People I hadn’t talked to in years asked me about it. I want to address first that I still have the utmost respect for everyone involved with Vitality and there is a special place in my heart reserved for that place. Everything I am about to say is a reflection of myself, my own existence in that role, a few too many lessons that needed to be learned, and damage that could not be undone by staying. A job can very quickly become a bandaid. Especially being surrounded by so many career-driven folks, it can be a slippery slope to tricking yourself to believe that you are just grinding hard to work towards the dream job or financial freedom or whatever when you instead are burying yourself in work to avoid dealing with much bigger things. Anyone who is reading this and knows me well probably could see right through this, but I truly couldn’t. It wasn’t until I thought about leaving that I realized how much this job was affecting me. The initial proposition to switch up my lifestyle forced me to think about what it looked like in that moment. What is this chapter of my life teaching me? What am I sacrificing in this chapter? Am I okay with sacrificing these things? The answer was no. I was sacrificing my well-being, my self-stability, my self-confidence. I was sacrificing my beliefs and my sanity. I was burnt out to a crisp. I was the ash at the bottom of the fire pit. I was numb. I was so deep in the hole I couldn’t even see how much I had lost myself trying to prove my worth in this job. Trying to hear that I was doing enough. Patiently waiting to feel strong enough validation. Trying to be great. At the end of the day, I got so sucked into wondering if I was doing enough or too much, being creative enough, scanning the market enough, selling the volumes, pushing the product, getting the PR, and keeping everyone happy, that I stopped doing the job for the reason I start — because I loved it. I fell out of love with it, and just like any relationship you have ever had to end, you know that that realization stings badly. Having to look someone, or something, in the eye and say you are no longer serving me in a way that I am sacrificing too much of myself to continue existing with you at this point in my life only to watch the damage that unfolds from those words is one of the worst seats to ever be in. I learned very quickly that it is not just relationships that can break your heart, but any form of goodbye you are this deeply attached to. So in attempts to find closure with a job that cannot speak back to me but a group of people who very much so shaped the person I am right now, I say this: Thank you for teaching me more about myself than I will probably ever be able to appreciate. Thank you for being patient with me and giving me room to grow. Thank you for giving me some of the most important people in that chapter of my life, and allowing me space to feel immense amounts of love and deep amounts of disappointment. Thank you for all the doors you opened, and thank you for the final push of strength to close your door for good. It was an honor to be the coffee girl.
The goodbyes that would follow in the next few weeks gave me clarity and reassurance about the people who filled my life. It wasn’t goodbyes, it was a see ya when I see ya, write me when you can, think of me when you look at the moon and know you are so loved. It was beautiful. The hardest goodbye was the last one. There is something about giving your little sister who doubles up as your twin flame one last hug goodbye, only to let go and see her face remind you of the lifetime of adventures, trips, laughs, cries, ups, downs, and everything in between flash before your eyes. Getting one last glimpse of the girl you grew up with, who has shaped you so intensely into the person you are, who has loved you at every chapter, and who has grown from a tiny little goof into a woman of integrity, power, and wonder. There was something about those tears in her eyes that were shaped just the same as the ones in mine, reminding me that we are cut from the same cloth and while I will miss her more than words can express, we are forever.
Packing the car was a real-life game of Tetris, but just as Anna ran out of her college house an hour after walking the stage and graduating, we perfected the pieces. Accompanying us was Anna’s older brother, Ben, who I had met just a week ago bowling at Elsie’s, where we drunkenly suggested he make the trek out with us as he waited for his new job to begin next month. I guess not all drunk ideas are regretful because looking back at it, I don’t know how we could have done that roadie without him. The Pedrick family was bred on adventure and I feel so lucky to be able to tap into it (and their wonderful supplies of camping gear). Five days, 3182 miles, between 10-15 hours of driving each day. You get to spend a lot of quality time with your brain in a circumstance like that. Service was limited, sometimes the views were uneventful, and as a car-sickness-prone individual, I was forced to face a good dose of self-accountability and reflection. I assumed I would have some grand revelations on that drive, that I would find my life calling or have a genius idea or something of that nature. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, I was met with the deepest and most hidden versions of myself, reflecting on my transition into adulthood, the chapters that have been written in the last few years, mistakes, lessons, joys, adventures. If you have ever had a dream where you are talking to the highest version of yourself, or your spirit guide or Dumbledore or God or whoever, it was like that for me. I felt like I was internally talking to a version of myself I have never met, admitting to all the insecurities, flaws, doubts, and hidden scars I have been too weak to fully heal. During other hours of that drive, my mind was silent. My eyes gazed out the window, staring at the mountain ranges as we made our way through Canada. For some hours I just existed, and it felt like medicine.
Don’t get me wrong, we also had our fair share of moments of delusion, belting out to Taylor Swift, making moose heads out of the babybel cheese wax, stopping to take pictures occasionally, listening to some podcasts, and picking each other’s brains. This is the second time I have hopped on a road trip with Anna and someone I just met (hi Liv I love you) and left feeling like I had known them for years. Nothing can form a relationship faster than being stuck in a small space for an extended time. Ben is a fascinating person, knowledgeable about so many topics, passionate about exploring, and deeply in love with Alaska in a way that helped emphasize the realization that oh my gosh we were about to call that place home.
Home.
I have called so many things home in my life. The house I grew up in — where I became a big sister, my grandpa became my neighbor, the sound of the ice cream truck was pure childhood bliss, the tradition of turning the giant snow mounds on that cul-de-sac into epic snow forts, where life was simply existing in. The house I spent my high school years in — bringing Lily into our family, overcoming sickness, falling in love, dressing up for dances, sneaking out, exploring this new version of myself. The dorm room I moved into — my first time living alone, immersing myself in the college lifestyle but tucking myself into that lofted twin bed every night no matter how many bruises I had to paint on my body to drunkenly get up there. The duplex on Cleveland where I started figuring myself out more, poured myself into work, left the country for a bit, fell in love with traveling, and the friends I was starting to call my chosen family. The apartment in Bierman — where I spent most of my summer soaking up love and living with a partner, the only security I could find in that stage of my life. The little green house on Marshall — where I lived with just about everyone important to me at some point, where I lost myself and where I put myself back together again, where I undoubtedly lived out some of my best life moments. The shoebox flat in Vienna — where life was nothing but magical until the nightmare of 2020 hit. The Axon Green apartment — where I learned what made home home and how difficult it is to exist in a space that is not that. And now my tiny little cabin, hidden in a forest on the hill outside of Denali, no running water, no bathroom, no service, absolute simplicity.
Home has never felt this way before.
This is the home my soul has been craving.
It is a beautiful place when you can find the crossroads between reaching the place your whole existence is pivotal in experiencing and also understanding that doesn't mean this place should be perfect, challenge-free, or easy. Alaska has been anything but that, but the challenges feel lighter, they feel more attainable to navigate. Maybe it is because I am so removed from everything that brought me pain that I can confront everything at face value, not just the pain but the joys, the adventures, and the fun. Maybe that is why life feels like a movie right now. Maybe this is just what it feels like to be so tapped into your present moments.
Whatever it is, I have never been more validated from the universe in a decision.
Life does feel like a movie right now and I am watching every second intensely so I can never miss a beat when recapping it.
Life is a game. It is a decision-based map with infinite moves if you are brave enough to pick them. So to whoever is reading this, I hope you to take one thing away from these words:
You deserve to bring all your wildest daydreams into reality. The universe is with you. I promise if you are chasing your heart, there is no such thing as failing.
You should never to settle on yourself.
Start playing the game.
It’s waiting for you.
a.m.p
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