As I write this, in November of 2022, I have just turned 50, and just recently completed my year of train-and-bicycle travel around the US and Canada, with my trusty Brompton folding bike (click here for a video of me unfolding it) and its travel companion, the Radical Design Chubby trailer.
This journey has been a “leap of good faith” for me. The many personal and collective events of the year 2020 shook my foundations: fear of my own mortality, a flood that displaced me from my home for three months, the sudden end of my wonderful romantic relationship of the prior seven years, and a fear of losing my livelihood. Brene Brown famously wrote, “Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear: I’m not screwing around.” This feels very real to me now. At age 48, I felt ready to cut the ties of my safe-but-uninspiring administrative day job of the previous 18 years, and take on a physical and interpersonal challenge the likes of which I had never before attempted.
Although I have returned from this first year of travels (and interestingly enough, find myself “grounded” here in Portland for a while again with a fractured foot) this was only the beginning of my life’s journey, both geographically and spiritually. The journey will continue, as long as I remain on this earth (and quite possibly beyond—who knows?)
This journey is about a few things for me: stepping into the unknown and trusting it, challenging myself physically, and giving my gifts to the world as best I can.
One of the most important things in life for me is to visualize new ways of being in the world: collaborative, joyful, full of love and respect and cooperation, with human and ecological thriving. And I like to support other people, individually and collectively, in living their best lives and dreaming up new ideas and projects for themselves and for the greater good.
For the previous 13 years, I had attempted to offer my skills of emotional and strategic support to people in the form of a conventional life coaching practice, as a “side hustle” to my administrative day job.
But I was never able to manifest a full enough client load to sustain me financially. And frankly, a lot of the folks I most enjoy and feel called to support cannot afford to pay for a life coach. And so, I haven’t actually been doing much of the work that I feel I am best suited to do in this world. My skills were going to waste, and I felt pretty sad and dejected about that.
The coronavirus, as well as a few personal health challenges I had been facing for years, made me contemplate how much time I might have left on this earth. I hope it will be at least a few more decades. But I don’t know. During 2020, I spent quite a bit of time thinking, What if I only had a year left? This put some things in focus for me.
I want to give my gifts to the world, with as much of my time and energy as possible.
And I want to experience as much joy and fun and love and adventure as I can, as well!
How best to combine these two goals? Take an epic trip, allowing myself to experience the beauty of the continent and to connect with people all along the way, to support them in their dreams and visions for themselves and for the greater good.
So, that’s what I’m doing! And now that I have returned from my 2021/2022 adventure around the continent, as my foot heals I am looking to the future, which will definitely include more travel, quite possibly overseas as well as domestically… and lots of magic, and wonderful human connections!
If you like my vision, and want to support it, there are a few ways you can do so:
Financial support. I like the idea of decoupling my work from my source of income. I want to support people who I feel drawn to support, and then I want to receive financial (or other material) support from whoever feels drawn to support my work. On some occasions, those two groups of people may overlap; people may purchase conventional listening/witnessing/life coaching sessions from me at my posted rates. In many cases, I suspect they won’t.
I am accepting financial support in three main ways:
* One-time donations at paypal.me/dreamintochange
* Recurring monthly donations at patreon.com/dreamintochange (most often, people contribute between $5 and $20 per month, but less or more are both possible)
* Larger donations from individuals I’m calling “fairy godfunders”
Lodging. I am not a camper, and I love to meet and connect with wonderful people, so I have been leaning into support from both friends and strangers to host me in their homes, and/or to have me house- or cat-sit for them while they are away. I enjoy a blend of these two, so that I have some time for deeper connections, and then some time for more solitude. I love to spend time enjoying each town or city as I pass through, visiting local parks, co-ops, and/or vegan restaurants! So, if you know anyone who might enjoy hosting me, or having me stay in their home while they are away, please let me know or put me in touch! I am looking forward to meaningful conversations with such folks, about everything from their dreams and projects and how they can be most effective in manifesting them, to philosophical conversations about the world, humanity, etc.
Lastly, I’m always interested to talk to people–anywhere in the world–about their dreams and projects. I have come to call these “magical meetings,” and I most often do them by video chat, but I also enjoy doing them in person or by phone. So if you, or someone you know, would like a free one-hour conversation, please let me know as well! The more people I connect with in this way, the more I can potentially network folks together, too, to increase everyone’s potential effectiveness in their goals. My own deepest dream for my journey is to build a network of inspiring people doing inspiring things, all around the continent.
If you’ve read this far, thank you so much for your interest and support! I hope to see you on the road!