Photo: Martin Dorsch via Unsplash
The cool breeze doesn’t exist anywhere but here. The one that kisses your cheeks and cools your skin. It doesn’t exist in Los Angeles or New York, two places where I lived once. You can’t find it in Columbus and only at certain intervals in Boston like in the dead of winter. It can’t be found in Paris, although there is a version of it in Tokyo that cools the entire island on repeat.
This morning I climbed from bed, turned the kettle on, and shuffled to the bathroom. For most of my adult life not much has changed about that routine.
I never actually liked San Francisco. Two years ago I found a minimal, modern, efficiency in Oakland, about seven miles from the city. It was affordable and edgy enough to be vaguely reminiscent of the things I loved about Brooklyn.
And for the next two years, I’d go heads down. For a long period of time, there was no one else around – just me, my music, my feelings and a fridge full of probably six things.
I immersed myself in app marketing. I began taking my writing hobby seriously. Eventually, I made new friends. It all felt healthy – much healthier than it had ever been in Los Angeles or New York. Like others of my generation I was starting over – for no major reason outside of the fact that I had enough mobility, curiosity and will to pursue all the options.
A year later, the app company dissolved. I began working as a marketing consultant and for the first time ever, became self-reliant enough to not need a full-time job.
Then, the two year mark hit. With the exception of when I lived in Santa Monica, since the age of 17 I’ve never lived anyplace longer for two years. It felt time to leave.
For one, things around the apartment started breaking. The management dropped by to fix the dishwasher, then the blinds. The neighbors living upstairs clomped about at all hours of the night while the train station across the street provided a different sort of irregular rhythm.
So, I kicked myself out of my apartment for two months and drove around California. I stayed with friends, family, and various communities while attending to client work. A few months after that, I got on a plane and flew to Tokyo where I lived for another month.
Despite these adventures, I haven’t collected nearly as many stories as I did when I was living in Los Angeles or New York. Still, I’ve managed to come out ahead. These two years have overflowed with healing and building, of learning and creating, of finding and providing for myself.
And I’m still here.
“What’s next?” I sometimes think. “Who cares?” I tend to answer these days. I am getting older, after all.
The next chapter may not be a location specifically, but a different kind of personal place involving a different set of freedoms. I may not have a lot of money, but I am free from the instability and specific brand of stress involved with working for a start up.
I’ve created the ability to work on a diverse portfolio of projects to keep my restless brain satisfied, and to propel myself forward in the only ways I know how.
For now, at least.
Maybe I’ll emerge at 40 and everything will be tied together. Maybe I’ll roll out of bed, flip the kettle on and feel a new cool breeze on my face. Maybe I’ll be a real writer, a world traveler, an independent thinker woven within a tribe that is global.
Maybe I woke up today and realized – that’s right, I already am.
I am grateful for this breeze – the one that blows the cobwebs from my mind and throughout this minimal space. It’s served me well since 2015, allowing the human organism dwelling inside of it to keenly grow.
For that, I will infinitely be grateful.