Wow, I’ve been in SoCal for almost two months now. The time has flown. I’m very sad to think about leaving soon.
I’ve got two more full days here in San Diego, and then a little more than a week in LA… and then I’ll be boarding that Amtrak for Portland on the 9th!
I plan to write at least a couple more blog posts from down here. This time, I’ll just do a catch-up of my life from the past couple of weeks. There hasn’t been anything as dramatic as in my last post, but it’s been a pleasant time.
Probably my top accomplishment has been filing my taxes, which I finished yesterday. It seems like they get more complicated each year, especially now that I’m mostly a gig worker juggling multiple Schedule Cs. And it’s hard to no longer have W-2s, and withholdings: even with my extremely meager earnings this year, I still owe more than $400.
Oh well… I’m living life on my own terms, and mostly loving it!
After I left off from my magical stay in Hillcrest last time, I moved onto my next cat sit, less than three miles away in South Park. But I did not escape my moving-day rain curse, despite a completely sunny forecast. When I got on my bike to make the move, within a few short blocks, some clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped.
Within a few more blocks, it was a downpour! (I repeat: the day’s forecast was for bright sunshine, with no clouds or rain.) I took shelter under the eaves of a Mexican restaurant, then ventured out again when it lightened up, then ducked into a parking garage when it started pelting again.
Eventually I made it to the home of my next adorable charges, who had awaited me patiently.
That was a short sit—just three days—and thankfully, it was sunny the day I moved out. Unfortunately, though, I was not able to find a place to stay with a cat sit nor a local host, so I ended up shelling out a couple hundred for a hotel for two nights. (I did use my new AARP hotel discount!) The “vacation” from responsibilities was nice, although the hotel was within about half a mile—if that—of the runway at the San Diego International Airport, so there were loud planes flying directly overhead most of the time.
I used the “downtime” opportunity of that middle free day to go out to Ocean Beach, which is a neighborhood I always enjoy, but hadn’t been able to find a sit this time. It’s rather out of the way from the parts of town I usually prefer to stay, near Balboa Park, so without a car it takes some time to get there. I strategically chose the hotel’s location to be about equidistant from both neighborhoods, and I biked over to OB that day. I got to visit my beloved vegan fast-food restaurant Plant Power, and also the Ocean Beach People’s Food Co-op, San Diego’s only cooperative grocery. (And right outside, a Little Free Library, complete with one of my favorite childhood Richard Scarry books!)
Once again, the forecast had called for sun, so I hadn’t brought a raincoat. Before you know it, though, the clouds started rolling in, and my friend Michele in Escondido texted me that they were having a downpour, complete with thunderstorm(!) up there, about 30 miles north.
I decided to head back to the hotel. The bike ride back was lovely, except for two things: 1) I was racing the rain (and nearly made it, though it started to drizzle by the time I got back to the hotel) and 2) a piece of my rear fender fell off while I was riding!
I was able to recover some of the part from the bike lane in the street, but I later realized there were a couple more parts I will need to get it repaired. The bike is still functional without this part, but it is now clunky and awkward to fold and carry it.
Sadly, there is only one certified Brompton shop in San Diego, and it’s on the island of Coronado, which is not convenient to get to. When I called the shop, they said they would need to keep the bike overnight to make the repair, which just would not have been feasible for me. I called an LA Brompton-certified shop near Union Station, and the mechanic I spoke with said they have those parts in stock, and can do the repair while I wait. So I’ll hold off until I get up there.
Biking along the harbor on the way back was probably the highlight of the day. The bike path offers a view of the downtown skyline, and with the clouds it was especially striking.
That evening in the hotel, I had my magical meeting with Ellen’s friend Hope, whom I had mentioned in my last post. Hope is indeed a magical young woman, currently in Illinois but soon traveling to Germany for a Workaway experience. I’m excited for her!
After the two nights in the hotel, I loaded my rig onto an express bus from the nearby Santa Fe train station up to Escondido, where Michele very generously rescued me from homelessness in her house for the next four nights.
On my way to her place, I stopped by Grape Day Park, which I always enjoy for its vintage railcar.
We went on a few excursions with her coonhound Dawa, and one day Michele took me to a hidden gem: Queen Califia’s Magical Circle! It is indeed a magical place—especially fun for kids, who could get lost in the mirror-mosaic-walled maze—designed by a French woman artist, the late Niki de Saint Phalle.
The next day, we went for a walk with a dog-walking client of Michele’s, Hunter, during which we saw some beautiful green hills (the rain undoubtedly helped!) and some beautiful snails. I’ve been surprised to see a lot of snails in this area.
The following day, I got to meet up with Trina and Phil, just about a mile up the road from Michele. These were the two whose cat, Lily, was the one to bring me down to SoCal in the first place, for a sit in February.
After that, my friend Tamara, who lives just north in Temecula, drove down to meet me and took me on a nice hike at nearby Dixon Lake. It was cool to catch up in person; we hadn’t seen each other since she moved away from Portland a few years ago.
Finally, about a week ago, I boarded another bus (in the rain, again!) to get back to San Diego—Pacific Beach, this time—to care for my new cuties, Moppet and Mittens. (I love the Beatrix Potter reference!) Mittens has been quite shy, but Moppet has made up for it with her snuggles.
And to top it off, the back yard contains an amazing orange tree that is now in season. It has been dropping about an orange a day for me, which I have thoroughly relished at breakfast time. (There are also a few strawberries just now ripening!)
I’ll definitely be sad to leave this city. I’m so glad I’ve been able to spend almost two months here this time, and I’m looking forward to my next stay here!
—
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This is a long one. (“Strap in tight, ’cause it’s a long, sweet ride!”)
It’s been a little more than two weeks since my last post, and I can’t believe how much has happened between then and now.
When we left off, at the end of February, I was just finishing up a sit in Mission Bay, near the beach. After that, I headed up north of LA, where a sit in Burbank was waiting for me. But first, I stayed with two wonderful Host a Sister women, one in Moorpark and one in Northridge. On my way up to Moorpark from San Diego, though, I found myself in a transportational pickle.
Having seen that the Amtrak Surfliner train was still running its “bus bridge” between Oceanside and Irvine, I decided instead to bike from Mission Bay to the Old Town Transit Center to catch the Coaster train, to take it to Oceanside and then transfer to the LA-area Metrolink train up to Moorpark.
Once I arrived at the transit center, though, I discovered that the Coaster was not running that weekend.
Doh!!
I managed to find that Greyhound had a bus departing that transit center for Oceanside within about an hour, though, so I breathed a sigh of relief, although I would have much preferred to take a train than a Greyhound, especially a $6.50 train vs. a $15.98 Greyhound.
But I dutifully made my way over to the stop, on the side of the street. I bought a ticket through the Greyhound app. I debated whether I should add a $19.99 ticket(!) for “bulky baggage.” I was quite certain that my trailer, and possibly also my bike, would qualify as checkable baggage that should be paid for. I also knew, however, that most Greyhound drivers don’t seem to care about such things. But I fretted that I had already hit one transportation snag in the day, and I feared what might happen if the driver somehow did decide to bar me from boarding. Reluctantly, I parted with the extra $19.99 for the baggage.
The bus arrived 40 minutes late. By then it had started to rain, and our stop was uncovered. Luckily, we didn’t have to stand there long enough to get drenched, but the raindrops did take a further edge off an already tricky day.
To add to this, I found that my $19.99 had indeed been wasted: after loading all my own baggage while the driver was checking in other passengers, I went to him to scan my ticket. He looked at me quizzically. “Why do you have two tickets?”
Argh.
Oh well. On the bus, on our way!
When we arrived at Oceanside, I wheeled over to the Metrolink train stop to wait. Soon, a transit center employee came out to tell me (and the family also waiting for the train, who had just spent $60 on all their tickets) that the Metrolink was not running that day.
Apparently that whole section of track was being worked on, so that’s why there was no rail service along that stretch.
But… seriously??
OK, what to do next?
I wanted to save my money by using the Amtrak gift card a generous friend had recently given me, so I preferred to take Amtrak rather than another Greyhound. I decided to book that “bus bridge” ticket after all, from Oceanside to Irvine, and then transfer to the Surfliner train for the rest of the ride to Moorpark.
All went well with the bus bridge, although after disembarking I did have to wait nearly an hour in Irvine for the Surfliner train to arrive. Fortunately, the rain mostly held off during that time.
But when I got on the train, I received a stern lecture from an exasperated conductor, shunting me to a different car specifically for bikes, and yelling that “bike trailers are not allowed on this train! It’s right there in the rules!”
I was flabbergasted.
Bike trailers not allowed on the Surfliner??
I had managed to board and stow it myself on the trip down from LA in February; I guess a conductor never saw it that time. It had never occurred to me that trailers might not be allowed.
Grateful to be aboard and on my way, I was still quite rattled. I hate breaking rules and upsetting people, and I also hate the idea that I can’t take the Surfliner anymore. It is a beautiful route, along the ocean rather than the freeway, and it is the primary way to get between LA and San Diego by rail. But the conductor kept yelling, “For future reference! For future reference!” so I don’t think I can chance running into him again with the rig. Guess it was fun while it lasted…
I set aside my worries for the time, and did my best to enjoy the ride. When I disembarked in Moorpark, I did see that some other bicyclists had joined the car, and indeed the space was filling up, so I could appreciate the reasoning behind the ban. But Amtrak needs to figure out a solution for this. Multimodal travel is important.
My friends Dave and Melissa met me at the train platform, and we stopped at Moorpark’s only vegan restaurant—Vegiterranean Kitchen—which I had sadly missed visiting on my last trip to Moorpark because of my soggy shoes. We picked up some food to go, and went back to enjoy it at their house while we caught up on our lives.
The visit was brief, though, because I needed to get to my new host Patricia’s place. As it turned out, she lived only about a mile away from Dave and Melissa. Dave gave me a ride over, and those two met and chatted about vegan potlucks and neighborhood things. I love it when I can facilitate people meeting each other; it’s a big part of what my life and travels are about!
Patricia was a warm and gracious host, with a cute Siamese kitty named Teddy. Patricia and I had some great conversations, and she even introduced me to some of her friends at a brunch meeting the next day.
When it came time for me to go to my next host’s house—Janeece, in Northridge—Patricia kindly offered me a ride, which I appreciated because I was now skittish about boarding the Metrolink train. (What if they also claimed I wasn’t allowed onboard? How would I then get back to San Diego?)
When we arrived in Northridge, Patricia and Janeece got to talking, and it looks like those two might begin a friendship as well! It felt cool to be a part of that possibility.
Janeece and I also had some juicy conversations. She is interested in becoming nomadic with her van, so it was cool to talk about life, aging with grace, traveling solo as women, etc. She also told me about a nearby Japanese garden, which I was happy to bicycle over to see while I was there.
The following day, when I was planning to bicycle 20 miles to my cat sit in Burbank, the forecast was looking foreboding, and Janeece happened to have a doctor’s appointment in Burbank. She gave me a ride, which I appreciated more than most rides I have ever received: the sky absolutely dumped, for the entire ride and then some.
She dropped me off at Kari’s apartment, where I was to spend one night as a guest, then take care of her two cats, Flash and Cali, for the next week. Kari and I had a lot in common, and we ended up talking for seven hours straight!
During that time, she told me about an amazing woman, Alex, who reminded her a lot of me. She had been the other applicant for that cat sitting gig. She is also a car-free full-time pet sitter, but currently based in LA. I recognized a great potential magical meeting, and asked Kari for an introduction.
Sure enough, a couple days later, Alex took three buses from Pasadena, while I took three buses from Burbank, so that we could meet up in person at the Griffith Observatory. Alex had been there before, of course, but I never had; in all the times I had visited LA over the years, I had never seemed to be able to find a way to visit there.
I’m so glad we did! The building was beautiful, and so were the views, and we had a wonderful in-person magical meeting, talking about the TV screenplay Alex has devoted her life to developing over the past two and a half years. She has been shopping it around, and from what she told me about the concept, I think she will find a way to make it a reality. I’m so excited for that! (Dear reader, if you have any Hollywood connections, feel free to reach out if you think you could help!)
When it was time to leave Burbank and return to San Diego, I wasn’t sure how to do it. No Surfliner, obviously. Could I take the Metrolink to the Coaster? What if one or both weren’t running?
I ended up deciding to take the Flixbus. They had one running from downtown LA—a 12-mile bike ride from Kari’s place—straight to Balboa Park, just a few blocks from where I would be staying with my next hosts, Lynne and John. I had heard about Flixbus, a German company, when they first arrived here in the US a few years ago. I had always been curious to try riding. They recently acquired Greyhound, too, so it was easy to book the bus from the Greyhound app.
After my recent experience with the Greyhound driver’s apathy about extra fees for baggage, I thought I would try my luck just boarding with a ticket for myself. I figured I could load my own bags, and no one would care. I even checked the app for the fullness of the bus; it looked to be only about half booked, so I estimated that there would be plenty of space underneath for the bike and trailer.
The bike ride to the Flixbus lot was mostly quite pleasant, mostly along a car-free bike path along the LA River. One stretch along that path was pretty awful, though: first, it was harrowing to cross a major four-way street with no crosswalk or light, to get onto the path. When a kind driver stopped for me and helped me to cross, that’s when I saw that the bike path itself was barricaded by a chain-link gate. It was padlocked shut.
What??
What was I supposed to do?
Just then, a French-accented gent on the other side of the gate stopped and picked up his bike, carrying it through a huge hole in the fence, which only then became apparent to me. I asked him if the path was open on the other side, where he had come from, and he assured me it was.
Thank goodness.
But getting through that hole meant I had to take apart the whole rig, and carry it piece by piece through the opening, with a big wire cable running diagonally through it.
Folded bike through? Check. Empied trailer through? Check. Bags through? OK. Now to reassemble it all…
And I was on my way. But on a couple of occasions, I saw cars driving on this very-obviously-car-free path.
Oh, Los Angeles.
I arrived at the Flixbus lot, and waited in the designated area with a group of people, some of whom, I later learned, would be boarding another Flixbus all the way to Las Vegas.
When my bus pulled up, and the cargo hold door opened (remotely!) I started loading my things, even though the trailer is quite heavy and bulky and awkward to load. Hardly anyone else was loading any bags, so my plan seemed to be working perfectly.
And then the yelling and waving of hands began.
“You! With the bike! Take that out of there! We don’t take bikes on this bus!”
I was dumbstruck.
What?? This progressive, German bus company was telling me bikes can’t go in their buses?
“And that cart! That’s way over the dimensions! We don’t take those either! Get ‘em out, get ‘em out!”
I found myself on the verge of helpless-rage tears. How was I supposed to get to San Diego?
Eventually, after much back-and-forth, one of the staffers was kind enough to go inside the building and return with a garbage bag. He put the folded bike into the bag, then insisted I take the wheels off the trailer and put them into the garbage bag as well. I did so as carefully as I could—fearing damage to either the bike or wheels—but the driver was yelling for me to hurry the whole time, that I was holding up the departure. I shoved everything into the cargo hold—giving myself a nasty bruise on my thigh and a small abrasion on my knee—and boarded the bus, thanking the driver and other employee profusely while the driver continued to glare at me.
We took off, and were on our way.
At the stop before Balboa Park—and then again when he dropped me off in the park—the driver took the opportunity for further “explanations” and complaints about the fact that I was on the bus with prohibited items. He kept talking about liability. I kept thinking that Greyhound has never had an issue with anything like this, and the buses are the same.
Finally, the nightmare was over, and I emerged—bruised in more ways than one—into the gentle sunshine of the park.
Now the magic could start flowing again!
A little backstory:
Twelve years ago, I first visited San Diego on a “scouting trip.” I had begun making an escape plan from Portland’s winters, having sloshed through 22 of them at that point, and having been about ready to be done with them after the first ten. My plan was that someday, somehow, I could spend about four months a year—December through March—in San Diego, with the remainder in Portland. My vision at this point is a bit more flexible, and geographically farther-reaching… but it was a cool plan at the time, and honestly, if I were able to manifest it long-term, I think I’d still be pretty happy.
On that first scouting trip, back in 2012, I visited Balboa Park for the first time. My friend Ember had said to me with a knowing smile, “Oh, you would love Balboa Park, Maren!” She was so right. I clearly remember walking along Upas Street on that first trip… specifically the segment between Park Boulevard and the canyon just to the west of there… and thinking, “Wow. How amazing would it be to live in one of these houses? I wonder if there could be some way that I could bring that about… some magic…”
I hadn’t thought much about that since. For most of the times that I’ve visited this area, I’ve made a point to find an AirBnb not too far from there, roughly around Florida and University. It’s been close enough for my purposes.
And now with cat sitting, of course, I’ve been taking the sits wherever I can find them: University Heights, Mission Bay, South Park, Pacific Beach…
But I needed a couple of days of fill-in before my current South Park sit began, so I looked on the Servas website.
And what should I see, but a house just about two blocks away from that tiny, specific segment of Upas Street that I had dreamed about all those years ago!
I reached out to Lynne, and she graciously confirmed that I could stay in their backyard AirBnb suite for the two nights of a traditional Servas stay. She and her husband John were quite busy during that time, so we wouldn’t be able to spend much time together, but she invited me to join them for breakfast both mornings, and I did. It was great to connect with them, and talk about travel and life, as we Servas folks always do.
And being in that lovely space in their backyard for two days felt like a dream come true. It even occurred to me that my initial dream—“living” in one of those houses—might have been overkill. Was more than two nights really necessary? In that one full day in between, I was able to appreciate the closeness to the park that had drawn me in all those years ago.
The second part of the magic happened during that full day.
You may recall that almost exactly five years ago, I had a life-changing epiphany in a little “spur” of Balboa Park that I had never visited before. That was when the “rainbow network” became a part of my consciousness—a part that has guided my life ever since, and that I believe will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
That little spur of the park is just a few blocks away from their house. After I was returning “home” after a few errands, I decided to ride a couple of blocks out of the way, to see if it was possible to enter that part of the park from the neighborhood to the east of it, rather than from the north, as I had originally done.
It was.
Looking carefully, I spotted what appeared to be an enchanted staircase descending from the residential neighborhood.
I hesitated for a moment; it looked like it might be private property.
But then I realized that if it were, there would be a sign to that effect.
So I locked up my bike on a nearby signpost, and began to descend the staircase.
Within a few steps, I found myself within an enchanted world, even beyond what I had hoped to find. When I had had the epiphany five years ago, the park felt otherworldly, but not especially beautiful, in the January gray drizzle.
But now, it felt like a scene out of Heidi, in the Swiss Alps. Trees were newly green with spring growth, flowers were blooming bright yellow and purple, and sunlight was dappling it all.
I stood in that first shady spot, and drank it in for about five minutes.
When I emerged into the sunshine a few steps later, things looked and felt a lot more ordinary. But as I continued to walk with a sense of wonder, more beauty seemed to spring up all around me.
After a few more steps, I gasped as I found myself at the “intersection” in the path where that initial vision of myself as a glowing green Christmas light had appeared. And as I retraced my steps and came back around the way I initially had, I reached the spot where the whole rainbow-network vision came to me.
As with the first time, I stood there for several minutes, just soaking it all in.
When I returned to the house that evening, I felt that I had completed both a 12-year and 5-year cycle by being there. It felt so powerful.
Earlier that day, I had had another cool connecting-with-the-past moment: I had walked over to the main part of the park, in the northern part by the Lions Optometric Vision Clinic, in search of a bench to sit and relax upon. Just as I found one, I saw a sign nearby: Blind Community Center Pollinator Garden.
This reminded me of Ellen Starr, the amazing woman in Princeton, Illinois with whom I had a very serendipitous meeting on my way out of town about a year and a half ago, and who had then told me that her goal was to make Princeton the “pollinator capital of the United States.”
So I had to text this photo to her!
She replied quickly, enjoying the sign, and told me that she had recently met someone who reminded her of me! Of course I asked for an introduction to this woman, named Hope (I love it!) and our magical meeting is now pending. I’m looking forward to meeting her!
This blog post is incredibly long. I will sign off here shortly. But first, I want to make an update to acknowledge the incredible kindness and generosity of two parties—one individual and one couple—whom I won’t mention by name since I assume they would prefer that, but who made some very generous gifts to me after reading about my recent financial struggles. If you are reading this now, thank you again; your gifts have helped me to breathe a little easier!
Also in that vein, offers for paid cat sits have been coming to me pretty regularly now, for this summer in Portland. I now have possibly up to six paid sits waiting for me when I return, which feels amazing after doing mostly unpaid ones for the past year and a half. Perhaps the tide is turning for me…?
And still, there are always more opportunities to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” such as discovering that I may owe a few thousand dollars in taxes for last year—oof!!—and also having my lodging for this next week fall through, so that in this moment I’m not sure where I will be sleeping tomorrow night, nor for the following five nights.
But I’m smiling! This life is an adventure, and for all the challenges, there is tremendous beauty and magic around every turn.
Thank you, as ever, for following along with me.
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Wow, how did more than three weeks go by since my last post? Time flies in the sunshine, I guess…
Actually, however, the first week of my time in San Diego County was marred by almost constant rain. It was a “trial by flood” for me: so painful to leave the rain of Portland to reach the sun down here, and yet have my familiar pattern repeat itself: this was at least the fourth or fifth time in the past dozen years that my “sunny winter SoCal getaway” has turned out to be rainy and/or cold, despite continual protestations from the locals that “this never happens here!”
Honestly, that was a rough week for me, not least because the rain also seemed to prevent my host’s internet from working well (we’re not in Portland anymore, folks!) so I forfeited a good chunk of my projected week’s Cambly earnings when I was simply unable to connect to the platform. (Foreshadowing, as it turned out—more on that below.)
But after forcing me to endure that meteorological “hazing” week, the weather gods relented, and since then it has been mostly sunny skies and warm temps, and I am loving every minute of it!
I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow of the past three weeks, but here is a brief summary:
I stayed for just over a week with some wonderful hosts in Carlsbad. (That’s Kimberly holding the umbrella over us outside her front door, shortly before she departed for her excursion to Antarctica!)
I have sat for three adorable cats so far: Lily the ebony beauty in Escondido, Theo the gorgeous tabby in University Heights, and Phifey the snuggly cutie here in Mission Bay. (Theo was lucky he was so pretty—his youthful antics tested my patience daily! The other two kitties, though, were a sitter’s dream: snuggly cuteness coupled with easygoing personalities. At this very moment, in fact, Phifey is fast asleep, snuggled up against my leg here on the couch.)
I have been out and about to reconnect with a number of friends from over the years, and to see many beautiful natural places.
Those places include the Bottle Peak County Preserve;
and La Jolla, including a lovely bike path and Seal Cove!
This pic of my muddy rig is from the Coaster, the regional-transit train between San Diego and Oceanside to the north.
That was the day I moved from Carlsbad to University Heights, and got thoroughly soaked. (In a bizarre twist, almost all of my moves between hosts or sits here have taken place on the few rainy days we have had. You could almost set a clock to it. I’m heading up north of LA day after tomorrow, on the 2nd, and rain is predicted once again, after nearly two weeks of sunshine. I will have an all-day multimodal journey by bicycle and multiple trains on that day.)
Remarkably, though, kind friends and hosts have offered me rides on some of those rainy days, saving me from soggy misery. But that one day (and, I fear, this coming Saturday) I faced the elements on my own. Thank goodness for rain gear, transit vehicles that can accommodate my rig, and space heaters to dry out waterlogged shoes at the end of the day!
The sunshine has indeed been the balm for my soul that I had hoped for. However, my time here has not been devoid of challenges, beyond the weather and transportation.
My finances are once again stressing me out. I have less savings in my emergency fund now than at any point since I began my travels in September of 2021. Coming down here by train cost me a pretty penny. I gauged it to be a worthwhile expense, given how strongly I wanted to not only be in a different weather pattern, but also to prove to myself that I was making progress in my life goal to do so. (Living multiple months of the winter here has been my goal for at least the past twelve years, and this is my first time to actually do it. Woohoo!!)
I therefore don’t regret the expenditure, but it has been made all the harder when unexpected extra expenses have arisen, such as higher cost for OsteoStrong’s monthly membership in California, coupled with the three-month moratorium on selling the plasma I used to sell to fund that, as a result of my December colonoscopy. The most recent shock, though, was receiving Cambly’s email the other day, notifying me that as of March 11th, their website will no longer be accessible from California. (Despite the fact that Cambly is based in California, the company has run afoul of the state’s labor laws, since they pay only $10.20 per hour, well below the state’s minimum wage, and also treat workers as contractors rather than employees.)
I can appreciate that the state of California wants to do right by workers; that is commendable. However, since nearly all my meager income does derive from that tutoring work, I will now be out about $500 for one month, at the same time that some of my expenses have increased.
Yikes.
It’s hard to know what kind of work I can do to fill in, in the meantime before I get back to Oregon and will be able to use Cambly again.
I am necessarily nomadic at this point, so anything I do can’t feasibly be in-person work. I have tried applying for online data annotation work, but I don’t think I passed their screening test, because I never heard back. I have tried offering some paid travel consulting or by-donation life coaching sessions online, but had little response. (One person did take me up on it, and we had a great session—if you’re reading, dear travel planner, thank you for that!)
In addition, another wonderful friend “fairy godfunded” me a $250 Amtrak gift card(!) which is allowing me to comfortably take a trip up north of Los Angeles for about a week and a half, since I hadn’t been able to find any cat sits nor hosts in the San Diego area for that particular gap.
This is exactly the sort of support I appreciate the most—it is directly aligned with both my work in the world, and my joy in the world.
That is the “prize” I’m keeping my eye on: to care deeply for myself and keep my self-care and joy as a priority, while also committing myself to doing my work in the world, to make this a better place for us all.
In that vein, I am continuing to do magical meetings with folks around the world, including—just this past week—South Africa, New Zealand, and Utah. From one of those folks—a fellow Servas member—I learned of two intriguing overseas possibilities I may look into: NALCAP, for tutoring English in person, in Spain(!) and Peace Boat, an amazing-sounding ship based in Japan that sails the world in service of peace and intercultural understanding; they are also seeking English teachers.
I’m keeping my eye out for opportunities for “day job” kinda stuff (let me know if you know of anything that might be a good fit) and I’m also continuing to lean into trust that my heart is my compass, and it knows what I am to do on this earth, and that if I keep committing and re-committing myself to it, the material resources I need will find me, as I need them. (Know any fairy godfunders who may feel a resonance with my journey? Feel free to introduce us!)
As always, thanks to you all for witnessing and supporting me in my journey. I wish you all a magical March!
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