holy shit guys

Life is pretty stressful.

So, I fully intended to not write an entry until I could post Fuji pictures and I was going to tell that whole story but because my computer is kind of sucktastic that fell through and now I have way more recent shit to talk about than Fuji.

I have about twelve trains of thought running at any given moment and I clearly need to sit down here and sort through it, bullet by painful bullet. But first! A quick recap of the latest adventures!

I arrived in America, lounged for four days, then Alex came and my best friend since I was four got married and then we spent about a week at my folks’ house preparing our glorious 1971 Ford Econoline RV for take-off. This involved removing the mouse infestation, vacuuming every cubic, pyramidal, and spheric inch of the damn thing (this took Alex two days!), and putting in beautiful new faux-hardwood flooring (looks fucking sweet!), and of course just general cleaning and loading all of our shit.

Here is what the majestic moho looks like:

it has an avocado-colored three-burner propane stove, with oven attached. it has a refrigerator. it has two single beds and a double. it has a bomb 70’s orange and brown color scheme. it runs VERY WELL and all of the dang aforementioned things WORK!

It is by far the coolest thing I’ve ever owned.

So, we drove that from Montana to Portland, stopping along the way to camp, go for a 3-day backpacking trip, go to 2 days of the Bumbershoot music festival in Seattle, and paddle a canoe around the Puget Sound and visit the seals. All around a motherfucking excellent vacation that I couldn’t have possibly enjoyed any more than I did.

But now we are in Portland! We are moving into a house tomorrow that is very much a work in progress but I’m excited about the space we’re renting. We get the whole upstairs to ourselves and it has slanted ceilings, two rooms, beautiful windows letting in the southern sun, and plenty of character. It’s in the Alberta Arts District. What I understand about this district is that it’s still really diverse despite having gone through a few waves of gentrification since the early 90’s, and that there’s a lot of focus on art, which I guess is pretty clear from the name. They shut down the streets every last Thursday and have an art showcase that is more in the vein of Burning Man than one of sipping wine and eating fancy cheese (which is what Denver’s last Fridays were always like). So! Good neighborhood, I’m really excited to explore it. This is my first time living in a city, though it’s hard to actually classify Portland as a city, as it rather feels more like a big cluster of fantastically small-town feeling neighborhoods, but with a west-coast liberal slant and plenty of weirdos. I love weirdos. So that’s a pretty big hooray!

But. Then there’s the whole… finding a job that will satisfy me, feed me, and in some way heighten my current life trajectory thing. That is feeling pretty stressful. There are a lot of options but I’m having a hard time motivating myself to start handing out resumes and cover letters for things that I’m not positive I want to do. There are a few jobs working with at-risk adolescent girls in a residential setting, which I could really excel at and would be pretty much a shoe-in for as far as the hiring process goes, but I’m not positive that I am ready to fall back on that skill-set. What I really, really want to do is open a business, and while that is an exciting prospect to me, it’s also absolutely terrifying.

I know nothing about running a small business except for things like, if you have a partner and they really want to fuck you over, they can, no matter how many inked protections you have in place, and that it takes a ton of capital to successfully start one. I am not really interested in having a business partner, but I have basically no start-up capital, so, er, what the fuck does one do? Is everyone who starts a small business independently wealthy in some way? Obviously not. And Portland has an awesome, amazing program called SCOREpdx that offers free counseling to people seeking to start-up or strengthen their small businesses. And not just like, come in for an hour and we’ll tell you what to do, but actual mentorship by people who have been really successful in the business world. I’m so grateful that these kinds of programs exist and that I’m currently living in a place where I can avail myself of them.

So, I have some goals in mind regarding the business. That is, I’d like to have a business plan written by January and have a place to cook in by March so I can get in on the Portland Farmer’s Market scene by the time it starts back up again in the spring. I’d love to be able to do a season with the Farmer’s Market and hopefully generate enough capital through that to spend the winter opening up a storefront. And then I’d like to pour my heart and soul into it and grow it into a legitimate way for me to support myself, my someday children, etc. I don’t need to get rich but I wouldn’t mind trying to be my own boss for awhile and have options in my life aside from “Deal With At-Risk Youth For Shit Pay,” which is about all I have at this point. Not that I dislike at-risk youth, actually I fucking love them, but I feel like without having the perks that wilderness therapy came with (ie. two weeks off every single month, getting to spend all of my working hours in a beautiful desert) I will find it a pretty hard avenue to stay on for much longer. At-risk youth are pretty stressful and I think it might be nice to worry about why the yogurt isn’t fermenting properly rather than whether Sally is tying a noose around her neck or planning to attack another student with a sharp stick.

But, obviously I can’t wait until spring to start making money. So this leaves me with a dilemma… do I start working part-time right now, making enough money to pay rent and eat and not much else, so that I can focus more time and energy on getting the business ready? Or should I look for full-time work so I can save more money to put towards the business, eventually, when I am able to find the time to start it up? My gut tells me to get a full-time job, save money, and spend all my waking hours on the business. Which is what a successful, driven, ambitious person would do.

But can I just try and be like, half-ambitious?

I don’t know. Here’s where my thoughts just start spinning out of control and I get anxious and paralyzed. And I have enough money at the moment to sit tight and not be worrying about these things, which actually results in me still worrying but not ACTING which is a terrible combination. SO, time to start acting, at least small actions, so I can feel like at least there is someone out there contemplating my resume and thinking about whether or not they’d like to give me some money for doing some shit for them.

Annnnd I’m spent.

<3