Hello friends, from the one and only San Francisco! I’ve been back in my old apartment the past few months, after nearly two years of living as a vagabond-nomad, and conditions could not be more different than when I left.
This time, I’m on a path of truer purpose and calling. I’m feeling grounded. I’m happy! I’m in love with my gorgeous birth city again, and filled with a deep, sincere well of gratitude to simply have a HOME again, as well as a path that feels like it’s truly meant for me.
(As one friendly and well-meaning person at a primitive skills gathering told me this summer… being a “nomad” is just a nice way to say you’re homeless. He wasn’t wrong.)
On the menu in this post:
- Remembering how & why I tore down my old life
- My process of figuring out what to do with my newfound freedom
- Growing through my time in Wilderness Therapy to where I am now
- Orienting to what’s next for Emma and for this blog
1. Why I Threw Away My Tech Career
Two years ago I was living in San Francisco, and I was a mess. I was working a full-time tech job where I’d been promoted from software engineer to engineering manager, and reaping many material benefits, yet still was struggling with a lot of stress and felt like I was fundamentally in the wrong place for me. I was going really hard on my hobbies in movement and dance, to try to balance the techy-brainy time I was spending on the computer, but I was burning the candle at both ends, barely leaving myself room to breathe and rest. My mental and physical health were suffering, and I got really scared.
Wondering if city life itself was my issue, I left San Francisco to become a digital nomad. I subletted my apartment, and flew myself and my computer to Mexico, where I planned to pursue my movement hobby/passion more deeply at an immersion. (See blog collection about Mexico & Movement here)
Shortly after arriving there, I ditched the “digital nomad” dream and cold-quit my job. I didn’t have a real plan. I only knew I’d couldn’t continue living with so much inner conflict and disharmony about my work, that I was at a breaking point and something needed to change.
For me, work is ultimately a very spiritual matter: how am I truly meant to contribute my life energy, and what mark am I meant to leave on the world?
There exist many organizations, paths, and causes that I feel genuinely moved by in this world, as well as ones that I have wanted to be involved with more from a place of fear. My involvement with Tech – for me, thus far – was the latter, or was at least tainted by disingenuous motives. I wanted a definite solution to my material fears in life, and I sold myself for a false sense of security instead of trusting my heart and feelings. The voice of my own inner aliveness during those times became dull and quiet, because I basically said “shush” every time it told me “this doesn’t feel right for you”.
During my years of following my confused and uncertain Tech path, I tried to restore my soul by using my newfound material resources to pursue activities and communities that I “truly loved”. That backfired in a sense because, then, I was running all the time. First I was running away from my fear of financial insecurity, running to big tech companies and a big salary even though I sometimes hated the work itself, often felt inner conflict about the chain of resources and culture change and power I was participating in, and usually had to force myself through it. Then, I was running away from the work I hated and throwing myself as fully as possible into dance, movement, circus, biking — running away into things that started out as fun and meaningful to me, but soon became another kind of achievement, trying to train my body to be more and more capable. I was pushing myself to the max, and eventually to a breaking point.
This past year I started reading more of the Bible again, in part because I was desperately in need of spiritual answers, and in part because for the first time in a long time (or ever, outside of a church?) I found myself in a special pocket of space-time surrounded by mostly-religious folks. By and large they were happy-go-lucky, balanced, honest, caring people who seemed to be in balance with themselves and life. They had something essential intact at the core of them, and it touched me.
One book that really spoke to me was Ecclesiastes. And here is the first time I’ve ever quoted The Holy Bible on my blog, so bear with me:
Then I turned to all the works that my hands had done and the labor by which I had labored in doing them, and indeed, all was vanity and a chasing after wind; and there was no advantage under the sun. (Eccl. 2:11)
That passage basically sums up my old life, living in the city and hustling myself out, for both work and play. So much labor and toil, but it all was vanity and a chasing after wind!
So it turned out that leaving San Francisco did nothing to alleviate my inner conflict about my work. I started that journey living barefoot by the beach in Mexico, spending my free time in a movement intensive and salsa classes. On the surface it was amazing, but in my heart of hearts I was trapped in a different version of the same inner turmoil.
One fated day I was crying, once again, to a good friend over the phone about how miserable I felt about my job. He told me I needed to quit, go do some inner work, ask earnestly for a new path and get ready to receive it.
Quit my job. Hadn’t I been contemplating that very act for many moons already? Maybe I just had to hear it out of someone else’s mouth, because his words echoed hauntingly in my head, and the very next day I put in my notice. I took all that I’d earned, all that was possible for me on that path, all the benefits that came with that position… and I let it all go. With all the bravery and false confidence I could muster, I tore down the structure of my life, and threw myself into the infinitely large and chaotic river of life with only my own inner compass to guide me.
2. Meeting and Navigating the Void
After quitting, I spent some time in a void.
Except, in life there are no real voids. Life rushes in to fill the void. It takes something supernatural, or effortful at a minimum, to actually hold an empty space. (Advanced meditators are really up to some kind of magic, in my view.)
My void was a disorganized, colorful, and piecemeal journey. I visited old friends who I hadn’t seen in years, and family. I spent time painting. I went on backpacking trips. I helped friends move.
And, I started trying to pull apart the tangled web of inner psychological fabric that seemed to be getting in the way of me knowing “what I want to do with my life”.
I tried therapy, and spent weeks writing out my whole life story — a big job for me, since I never seem to be able to sum things up neatly or succinctly, and my life path has been a winding one! Though tedious, this did help me see the threads of my story that were truly infused with my life force.
I came out of that process with many ideas, and they were all just… baby ideas. I didn’t know which one would work, so I explored everything.
It was slow and tedious, in some ways. I just started pulling threads. That was so hard for the insecure part of me who wanted to know for sure which path to take. But every single thread was, at a minimum, authentically interesting to me.
One example of a thread I pulled that didn’t end up being “the one” was the idea of getting into birth work. It was a great idea to explore! I even got to spend a few days with a friend who was a postpartum doula and her new baby, plus talk to other interesting women in the field. I ultimately got to an honest inner “no” about this path, but it didn’t feel like a loss because I’d gained valuable insights about myself and my values in the process of exploring. In this case, I learned that I didn’t want to completely give up on my well-honed analytical side, and that I didn’t feel ready to dive fully into full-time care work. Maybe one day, but not now.
So then I started exploring the “wilderness therapy” idea, which seemed like a total pipe dream. I’d heard about this field of work years ago. In a different version of my life, I honestly should have gone and done this in my 20’s! My pessimistic brain thought that this path wouldn’t pan out, but I diligently explored it because what the heck else did I quit my job for, besides to give myself an opportunity to go out and chase down my actual dreams? And one thing I’d repeatedly and sadly daydreamed about, from my desk in my home office or my company’s office, was the beautiful and epic simplicity of my life back when I was hiking the PCT and basically living out in nature. So maybe it was immature on some level, but I really did have this impulse to go do something like that, but in a professional way, and being of service in the world.
Lo and behold, when I tugged on that thread, doubtfully yet willingly, it kept going. One thing led to another, from talking to people to interviewing with companies to scratching my head about where I actually want to do this, if I could. When I was really in the thick of it, God knocked me over the head one day with some unmistakable synchronicities that said “go look in Arizona”.
So I did, and the first thing I found was Anasazi. And that was it! I got such a clear and full-body “Yes” inside myself when I saw their website. I even knew, deep in my being, that they’d hire me – soon – even though they claimed not to be hiring again until several months later. I emailed them. And I was illogically confident enough that this would work out, that I bought a van the next week, to get ready for a potential journey to Arizona. The day after I got the van, they emailed me back and asked for an interview.
3. Nine Months at Anasazi & Why I Moved On
Then, I had one of the most wild and unique working experiences of my life! There’s so much to tell, and also… so much to leave in a happy space inside my heart. I wrote a whole separate piece about it here.
Anasazi is a primitive‑skills wilderness therapy program for teens in Arizona. I worked with them for 9 months as a “TrailWalker”, which is their name for the guides who go out into the desert with the program participants.
I loved my time there. I was challenged to grow in so many meaningful ways, and it served as the perfect backdrop for me to keep sorting out what felt “right” for me.
Though I’d felt very spiritually guided to this place, I mostly knew that my time at Anasazi would be limited. The lifestyle was never going to be sustainable for me, and I really needed a work-life path that I could see myself staying with long-term. And the more time I spent in Arizona, the more I realized that I certainly didn’t want to be a nomad, and I also didn’t want to start a whole new life in a new place. I didn’t want to build a community from the ground up. I didn’t really want to keep meeting new people! I missed home. I missed the Bay, where I’d lived before, and where so many family and friends lived.
But, Anasazi also was perfect for me for a time. I’d chased down a dream for real, and I was using it to actively workshop my ideas around what to do next.
One of my professional motivations for my choice to work in Wilderness Therapy was to explore mental health as an industry. And boy, did I learn! I learned that behavioral and mental health workers are doing HARD WORK! I grew to respect it as a life path, and I also came around to feel that… no, I wouldn’t want to deepen on this path by, say, becoming a therapist. If I were to work purely in mental health, I’d want as much education as I could get. I’d want to go to school to study Psychology and various kinds of therapies. I think that could have been a really good path for me if I’d chosen that in my twenties, but for this juncture of my life, the price of admission is too high. I need a work path that I can engage with sooner. I’m not going to throw multiple years at school right now. If it was truly right for me, I’d do it. And I think this job gave me a really good opportunity to consider whether that’s right for me. And the answer, for now, is No.
Unfortunately, that left me in a little bit of confusion around what the plan WAS, if not that. I had my growing desire to have a home again and return back to the Bay. And I had a desire to continue being engaged with work that feels truly meaningful and spirit-guided, as was my work with Anasazi.
The answer came when I wasn’t looking for it.
Just like how I found Anasazi, I was struck over the head by God – or whatever you want to call the Great Mystery in charge of it all! He/She/It sent me a series of compelling synchronicities that jostled me and sparked my soul.
It happened during a visit back in the Bay in one of my off-weeks. I was going to Movement classes in SF with one of my teachers, and it was there that I met E, whose personal story around transitioning from Tech work to bodywork, and her deeply resonant published writings, spoke to the very core of me. She was saying things that I’d felt and hadn’t put words to, about what felt “wrong” to me about our collective focus on technological growth, and what felt “right” about my fully-embodied life pursuits (such as movement practices and hands-on bodywork).
After meeting E I was contacted out of the blue by my TVM teacher R to tell me she’d been thinking of me every day and knew she had to contact me for some reason, that I had a gift and she wanted to help me nurture and grow it.
It was like a portal opened up out of nowhere in my life, and it pointed me back to the bodywork world – a world I’d stepped into back in 2017 at the World School of Massage, and left with a lot of unfinished business.
When I started looking at it, the path – or at least the first steps – became so clear. Energy came from all directions at me that said “Yes”. It sent me to the San Francisco School of Massage, which I promptly fell in love with, and when I discovered that they had a full-time massage therapy program that started just a few days after my return from my upcoming trip to Europe… I let the idea marinate for a few days, and the green light only grew stronger. I signed papers, put some money down, and sealed my fate with full-bodied, vigorous enthusiasm.
It might be the first time I’ve felt this deeply “I know what I’m doing with my life now!”
It only took me 32 1/2 years. LOL.
Will this feeling stay? Will I be able to nurture this seed of an opportunity into something full-grown, vibrant, and beautiful? My sincere hope and belief is Yes.
4. Moving On and Forward: Bodywork and Coming Home
So I figured out “what I’m doing with my life”… at least for now. I finished up my time at Anasazi and left on good terms, with hopes that I could return at some point in the future as a “Guest Walker”. I spent a month in Europe, flew back, drove to SF from Phoenix, and immediately started full-time school at the SF School of Massage. I’ve got most of my gear in a box in a closet now, but am hoping I’ll occasionally take my tools out on a hike, saw off a piece of a branch, and carve a spoon.
For now, I’m feeling pretty serious alignment on the path of bodywork as a professional pursuit. I’m LOVING my school (as intensive as a process as it can be!), and I plan to write about massage and bodywork as I’m finding my way on that path. It’s long been a dream of mine to find a lifestyle where I’m doing something I love, AND regularly writing about it. I think if I’d had a steady home during my time at Anasazi, that could have been possible there. But I lived too much on the wind, and couldn’t be organized and consistent with a writing practice. Now I’ve got a stable home, and a more regular schedule, and something to dive into that really lights me up… so there’s a lot of potential!
Also, remember E, the catalyst who inspired me to get back into bodywork? She has become my roommate! And now we are co-creating home and life growth together.
Life really feels magical sometimes.
Expressions from this side of the here & now 