Category: Life

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Life after Moving 1,100 Miles from Home

I don’t know what my future holds here, to be honest, all I know is this is definitely somewhere I’d rather live than anywhere I've been in my home state. I don’t know if the novelty of Washington will eventually wear off, and I’ll feel the need to move yet again, but right now, it’s exciting. Right now, I’m feeling like I have a place here. Right now, I’m excited to see more of what it has to offer. Everything here is new. Everyone here is new. And everything about that is just so exciting.

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Escaping the Desert

I've lived in the Phoenix, Arizona area all my life. Aside from four years of living in Flagstaff for university, which is just over 100 miles north of Phoenix, I've spent my whole life evaporating away in this hellscape of a desert. So doing the math, that's a grand total of 25 years of being roasted alive by how much the sun spites us, here. Plus side? I'm still alive, so take that, Mother Nature.

Where I live was never much of a thought in my life until I started getting closer to 30, feeling the desire to create more stable connections, and feel like I have roots in the place I want to call home. I always knew Phoenix wouldn't be home forever, but the thoughts of leaving became too loud to ignore when I moved to an area in the city where I thought I'd be happier, and I'm still...not happy. Don't get me wrong, I love the friends I've made here, and the family members (that I still talk to) that still live here. However, I can't shake the feeling that I don't have a foundation, here. I've had to fight tooth and nail to feel like I even have some sort of tie to this city, and even then, most days, I feel incredibly isolated.

"But Jeff, have you tried-" yes, I have. "Okay but why don't you-" yep, already did that. "Have you considered that-" dear reader, I've tried it all. Even my therapist said something along the lines of "I've watched you try so hard to fit in here and none of it has gone the way you want it to." I'm not here to justify why leaving my hometown is the correct choice, and I'm not here to (entirely) talk crap about where I grew up. This city is gorgeous in all its own ways, but I'm not here to explain to anyone why it's no longer for me.

I'm here to talk about Seattle.

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Self-Care for a Positive Outlook

Learning to care for myself as a content creator has been one of the longest, most arduous journeys I’ve ever faced, and to be completely honest, it will probably be a constant one. It’s one thing to worry about the variable income that comes from full-time, independent content creation, and it’s another to worry about the mental weight of not only that, but everything that comes from being in a space that gets inherently looked at as competitive. Sometimes it gets so overwhelming, that I can’t even begin to think about how to grasp that weight, and throw it out of my mind.