SERENDIPITY, travel, & tiny living

I think that one of the most challenging and rewarding journeys that we embark upon on as human beings is choosing to live a life that aligns with your personal values and code of ethics.

My 20s have been a time filled with constant push and pull as I navigate ‘what I want to be doing’ versus ‘what I think that I should be doing’. There is no right or wrong way to live, but it can be easy to numb yourself to the beauty that is Choice and Freedom and do what others believe is ‘normal’.

I started grappling with this concept as a finished my last year in college (I know, how textbook of me). Freedom and Choice are a luxury, but also very big and scary concepts to digest with in a world that practically uses the education system to groom you from kindergarten to your early twenties to be a certain way and aspire for certain things. If you’re anything like me, you didn’t think too much about your choice to partake in the whole matter until it was unavoidable and necessary. My first six months + post grad were probably one of the most terrifying times of my short, but sweet existence. What was terrifying to me was this: I had done all this work in school and spent all this time on a degree for what? I’m not scared of hard work and I’m not trying to completely bash the education system (although I have plenty of food for thought to be discussed at another time), but I had never thought about what exactly it is that I wanted to do here and now.

Who do I want to be? What do I want to do with my time here?

My biggest fear is waking up on my last day here realizing that I didn’t get to do anything that ever made me feel excited to live. Fear that I wake up in an all too perfect house with career that leaves me satiated, but not full, and I have a beautiful husband and two beautiful children and a beautiful golden retriever. Fear that I lived a life that checked other people’s or societies boxes, but I never prioritized my own. At the end of the day, you have to live with yourself and the way you choose to live your life. When decision making on ‘what do I do next’ becomes a little unclear, this fear has been a sort of road map for how I want to live my life (especially in my twenties).

As a product of the education system and middle class America, these thoughts and actions didn’t necessarily come naturally to me. By fate or by karma, I was sort of accidentally pushed into the whole ‘do what excites you’ unconventional lifestyle thing. Long story short, I had my heart set on staying in Santa Barbara post grad, getting a pilot’s license or job job, and ‘starting a life here’. This master plan fell through when I couldn’t find a place to live here. The amount of reject messages and no responses I got when attempting to finding a place is borderline comedic now, but was a confusing and painful low at the time—shelter is a fundamental human necessity and to be rejected so many times takes a toll mentally on individuals (and my experience doesn’t even come close to true homelessness, but gave me a glimpse that is a reality for some people and challenged me to become more empathetic to others).

Time was running out. You can only couch surf on your friends couches for so long (and if I slept on your couch and you’re reading this, know that I am still ever so grateful for you and your hospitality and cozy couch). Days passed and I wasn’t any closer to making triple the months rent in monthly income or having an excellent credit score at twenty-two (aka meeting the qualifications to find a place here). I sent an email out of the blue to my manager at the brand I was surfing with, asking to go to a surf contest in France as a cheerleader—a very out of the blue, very bold, and unlike me ask—but he said ‘yes’. Two and half weeks later I was off on my first big post grad adventure in EuropeLand.

I had always wanted to travel, but after the pandemic/so much time living in an uncertain world, thought settling made the most sense, and travel would be later in life thing. I would have more money, plan a perfect itinerary, go on my merry way. In a way it felt like the universe or some higher being or just plain luck or whatever is out there believed in me, knew I was ready to go, and knew that I would probably procrastinate on finally spreading my wings until the day I woke up with the golden retriever and the perfect house. The thing is, I genuinely love Santa Barbara and California and life here, but I’ve always been incredibly curious about what’s out there. And I guess there’s no time like the present to explore.

So I was launched into EuropeLand, and then a month on the road from California to the southern tip of Baja, and then to the Canaries, and then to Central America, then to Indonesia, etc. etc. I would be gone for months and then back to Santa Barbara on couches or in odd leasing situations, picking up shifts at a local winery or working a modeling gig, refusing to give up my dream of continuing to call this place home.

Traveling seemed to wake up a part of me that I didn’t know was sleeping. The world is so wonderful (it’s cliche, but true). I love the literal act of travel: when everything in the world sort of slips away because your only mission is to get from point a to point b. I love the breathtaking feeling when you get off of an airplane in a ‘foreign’ land and it feels like you time traveled to a new world—seeing everything like you’re a child and seeing the big world for the first time. I love observing how different cultures thrive, and eating wacky food, and looking at art, and trying to learn new languages. Most of all, I love the people; of being reminded that the world isn’t necessarily full of dangerous or malicious people because they are the ‘other’ to us, but rather heaps of kind and loving and wonderful people. I love studying how they live and the conditions that bring them joy and fulfillment in life.

There are plenty of good people at home, too. On an early spring day months later, Emma (aka the bravest, boldest person I know) saw a sweet lady gardening at the house above our favorite surf spot in Santa Barbara and asked if she had a place for us to live. The rest is history: Emma continued to travel and I moved into the Airstream on their side yard. I never considered tiny living before the opportunity presented itself to me, but I sometimes see it as the universe always secretly listening and giving you what you want in silly, creative ways. Having less has given me the opportunity to have more. I can book a ticket, close up shop, and be gone exploring; satisfying the urge to bop around the world and do exciting things. Or I can open the windows, water the plants, stay a while and just enjoy being here. I’ll probably save the in depth tiny-living spiel for a later date, but none of this would have been possible without my dear and wonderful good-people landlords, serendipitous timing, and a focus on living a life that excites me.

Life has a way of always working out. It’s funny to think back to the chaotic houseless days, but know now that there’s a happy ending. Choosing to live an unconventional life is glamorous, but also comes at a cost: there are days where it feels like I’m doing the wrong thing by working a job that I don’t necessarily see as a serious career or I feel like a sort of degenerate for ‘wasting’ my time traveling and scheming the next big adventure or spending too much time surfing or doing whatever else brings me joy. I sometimes think that maybe society confuses happiness and joy with lack of productivity/success or that America’s Puritan settler belief system is still so ingrained in how we define success that it can be a hard mold to break out of. I’ve been trying to tell myself to slow down, be nicer, and enjoy it all because it really is an incredibly good life at the end of the day, and I don’t want to waste a minute thinking otherwise.

Stepping off my soapbox for now,

Meg