It’s always more fun to write with sparks of engagement from readers, and both Anna and Natalie wanted some further exploration on concepts I mentioned in some of my latest newsletters:
what I meant when I said living in the desert feels like I’m on “vacation” all of the time, and
how I balance having one foot in corporate work and one foot in what appears to be a non-corporate place (spoiler alert, if both of your feet are evenly planted in both, feels pretty stable)
The two are closely related.
Out of Office
I’ve been thinking about the vacation question for the past few days. Matt and I were discussing it on our way to Frontier Cafe (which is the one of the best places to get a bagel (and lavender iced coffee) around here). The timing of the conversation was auspicious because Frontier in the summer is a dream - no one is there! A rarity when it’s one of the few coffee shops in the 3 major high desert cities and usually buzzing with visitors.
My framing of my life feeling like I’m on “vacation” isn’t 100% accurate because vacations are… not always relaxing. There’s the logistics, the outside world bothering you interested in your adventure (leading me to turn off my phone on some vacations), and then the smack in the face when you return to normal life. “Vacation” is more of a colloquialism to represent “escape” or “relaxation” than what they look like in practice.
It’s easy for me to think in the negative space of a topic, or what something is not. Feeling like “vacation” here is not:
the activities we do, or some sense of adventure we can access here that we didn’t have before (we did very similar things in other places) - novelty
something that is almost a dream-state that will have an end (life here is business as usual now, and there wasn’t even a honeymoon stage because we’ve lived here before) - perpetual leisure
or putting aside any specific responsibilities but knowing we’ll have to come back to them - shirked commitments
Side note: part of living here will always feel inherently escapist because of how we started our relationship with the desert - as a place of solace, as a safe haven during COVID. We didn’t move here because of a job opportunity, or family, or something else that made is less than 100% a personal preference.
But what I actually mean by “vacation,” and what Matt and I discussed, is that the mental load of external noise is significantly lighter and decision-making is minimized. So yeah, maybe in a sense it is an escape, but also in a sense a chosen freedom. And I don’t think those are the same.
It reminds me of one of my favorite lyrics from the song It’s a Game by El Vy:
Didi, I belong in California
Came out here to disappear
And disconnect the dots
I just took 15 minutes to sit outside in the sun and stare at a desert iguana. This is pretty standard. I’ll pull a chair out into the direct sunlight, stare at a couple iguanas, and tune into the absurd collection of bird songs. When I’m tuned in here, I’m tuned out of there. I am choosing to engage with my immediate environment, instead of feeling beholden to external stimuli. Escape would feel like running from something; I am running towards the divine. Divine being a mental state rather than place.
Through this exercise, I’ve also realized this sense of freedom is less about the place itself (rural desert), but more how I’m choosing to interact with the rest of the world now. I’m silencing the low, omnipresent hum of needing to be accessible to anyone all of the time. If I’m actually needed, I can be reached. I feel less urgency to reply to texts or emails (work not included, see next section). I’ll get to them if/when I feel like it. I’m in a season of listening less to the other, listening more to myself.
Whether directly related to the mental load or not, I’m also more cognizant of what I want to be spending energy on. Some of what I choose to spend time on isn’t necessarily a walk in the park (though sometime it is literally a walk in a park). But what I mean is my daily decisions aren’t how I’ll transport myself to the office that day, if I’ll go somewhere with co-workers after work, if it’s better to go to the grocery store at this time versus that, who or what is requiring my emotional or mental engagement that day. Again, decisions are minimized.
I have the privilege of more freedom in my focus. When I do choose to focus on something, I can get really into it, like a more readily available flow state. Not a flow state for a specific activity, which is how it’s typically used (like feeling euphoria while hiking), but a flow state within a concept, an idea, a color, the sky. This ends up being a prolonged, uninterrupted meditation where I am unpacking old beliefs, trying out new ones - a lot of what I do via these newsletters. The sanctity of these meditations also contribute to a closeness to the topic, and therefore a needed closer examination of what I feel like sharing, versus what I want to keep private, protected, the disconnected dots that are just for us and can only truly be understood by our personal experience.
Corporate Life in the Dez
A couple things come up with this one:
Remote work: how working remotely creates a large, natural separation from the corporate world and more flexibility to choose how far we want to engage
Our community: having a diverse group of friends (career-wise and age-wise) makes it easy to not put too much emphasis on our jobs
Staying dedicated to my intentions that I outlined here
Redefining work, for myself
I don’t know how many of our friends and family (elsewhere) are 100% remote. Many are returning to offices in some capacity and have been for a long time. We still don’t know how we finagled this situation, but as of now over 50% of my company lives outside of San Francisco and there’s no plan for a return to an office. So our time is objectively more flexible and less confined.
Despite the obvious continuity of working in the corporate world, my relationship with my career has undergone a steady transition over the past few years (2020 onwards) and at current state, is a complete 180 turn of where I was in my mid-twenties. This happened in part due to external circumstances (the entire world did a shift in 2020), and part of this is my time and effort to really explore what type of job works for me and what type of job doesn’t work for me, via therapy and professional coaching. And then I started to seek those opportunities.
Since 1) switching companies in early 2022, and 2) working completely remotely, I own so much more of my time in relation to my job, I have the autonomy to be strategic with where and how I spend my time within my job (this is likely more due to working for a start-up than anything else), and I don’t value myself based on my job performance except that my conditioning will always lend to me putting in my best. I just have more awareness of what’s worth it, for me and my goals, versus what feels like politicking or not aligning to my values.
Back to reality
What surprises people most when hearing about our time here thus far is our ability to make a large number of friends, and foster deep friendships, quickly. We live in a small town, we run into our friends in our small town, and we talk about the typical life stuff of living in a small town. What we have in common isn’t related to our jobs, so it’s really easy to not talk about them (whereas my job and Matt’s job responsibilities seem to mesh together more and more over the years so our experiences are very shared). If work comes up at all, I’m drilling my friends about what it’s like to not have a corporate job and just learn about a different lifestyle than what goes on at home.
Intentions
I had completely forgotten the specifics of my intentions from when I documented them in January, but upon re-reading them, I’m pleasantly surprised that they must have been authentic enough for me to do them sub-consciously. They are:
Write
Connect with powerful women
Move my body
Keep learning
Do less of what drains me
Maintain a flexible mindset
When I do activities aligned with these intentions, I find myself focused on my place in the here and now (especially when I write). I’ve met incredible, influential women via community events, reiki, other classes and trainings, yoga. I learn via these events, reading, deep discussions with friends, from nature. And per this whole newsletter, I consistently work on my boundaries while not swinging too far into isolation or stubbornness.
This all goes back to the concept stated earlier - it’s not about the place. And that could be in conflict, or in tension, with some of my earlier writing about choosing to move here and reasonings behind that. I will always feel blessed and drawn to the magic of the desert. In actuality, I think this more closely aligned with growing older, working very diligently to seek independence (both physically and psychologically), and Matt and I communicating and defining what we want our life to look like.
I hope you are always empowered to investigate what that looks like for you too.
Love,
Lily
i loved! thank you! definitely excited to replicate aspects with a non-WFH job and this summer 🌼