There are activities I have returned to again and again throughout my life:

• baking
• bicycling
• calligraphy/inking
• camping
• cooking vegetarian food
• dancing
• drawing
• gardening/farming
• going to plays
• going to the library
• going to the movies
• reading comics
• reading fiction
• reading nonfiction
• reading poetry
• rollerskating
• sending snail mail
• solo backpacking
• stitching by hand
• studying culture
• studying history
• studying media
• studying religions
• studying psychology
• swimming in the ocean
• train travel
• watercolors/gouache
• writing poetry

And there are vocations that have compelled me at different points, some more cyclically than others, and all only half-realized at best:

• artist
• editor
• farmer
• forest ranger
• journalist
• lawyer
• poet
• publisher
• scholar
• teacher
• therapist
• writer
• youth worker

There are also themes and motifs that have seemed to haunt or inform my life’s narrative, including:

• a restlessness, a comfort in movement and travel and change, an attraction to chaos despite my fairly organized nature
• a strong pull to the British Isles where 99% of my ancestors originated
• a strong sense of place for Oregon west of the Cascades where I have lived most of my life
• April and October as poles of my year
• black ink
• cats
• creation stories
• dark roast coffee
• “do something pretty while you can” as life philosophy via “We Rule the School” by Belle & Sebastian, Tigermilk (1996)
• earl grey tea
• euphoria in queerness
• evergreens
• high fantasy: Tolkien, Arthurian legend, Norse mythology, The Legend of Zelda
• the history of mass communications technology from the printing press to the World Wide Web
• “joy / landlocked in bodies that don’t keep / dumbstruck with the sweetness of being / til we don’t be” as life philosophy via “Emily” by Joanna Newsom, Ys (2006)
• need for significant time alone
• plaids and florals
• sourdough bread
• violets and lilacs
• the work of decolonization, rematriation, and liberation for all oppressed peoples and other creatures of Earth

These lists add up to a type of person who you can picture, maybe. A typical Pacific Northwesterner in many ways: outdoorsy with a literary bent, introvert with a love for the public sphere despite themself.

Here is a selfie I took on break at work yesterday.

Behind me is the packshed where I wash and package produce for an organic farm full-time (plus a significant amount of harvest, pruning, weeding, transplanting, irrigation installation, etc). The work is very tactile, enjoyable, and physically exhausting, with something a little different every day.

Do I like the work? Yes. I like to work with my hands and stay in shape. I like to contribute meaningfully to my local food system.

Can I support myself doing this kind of work? Kind of. I can pay rent to live in someone else’s house, feed myself, afford to do some fun things too — albeit with no savings and increased risk of injury from 40 hours/week of manual labor.

Am I building skills to be able to run my own farm, theoretically? Totally. I feel at this point that I could do it if I had the money to get started.

Is it enough for me? Do I have the energy after work to participate in the creative and academic pursuits that mentally stimulate me, or to volunteer for social causes that I believe in? Often not.

I find myself daydreaming about running a large school garden where we contribute food to the school kitchen and cook meals together, talk about whose land we are really on, explore place-based learning, think critically and creatively, and connect the dots between food access and other forms of social and environmental justice.

I find myself daydreaming about teaching integrated social studies and English literature at a high school in Portland, maybe running a garden club on the side. Would that be enough for me? Would I ever have the time and energy to make art again?

I find myself daydreaming about public schools quite a lot lately, despite some soft discouragement from a few people. But also encouragement from a couple others. Mixed reviews. I have mixed feelings myself. Could I even do it?

Here is another selfie from last week camping with my family in Oregon. It was such a wonderful week of laughter and reconnection and celebration for big changes.

I feel pulled in many directions right now, but have a sense that I will know what to do next year by my Hobbit Adulthood (turning 33 in February!), and that I maaay be going back to school next fall (2027).

In the meantime, I am going to keep enjoying this farm season and getting to explore a new region of the PNW. I am going to try to make more comics, more poems, and more loaves of sourdough as the autumn comes. I am going to meditate on all of it and see how I feel.

More lists will definitely be involved.