We’re closing in on ten months since my house burned down. It’s been the hardest, but also some of the most awakening months of this journey thus far. Having your home burn down allows you to truly ponder how breaking free from societal norms might impact your life. When something you’ve spent years building suddenly disappears, you start questioning everything. Where do I want to live? What do I want to do? What actually makes me happy? And why do I feel the need to have an answer to all of these questions?
Right after the fire, I felt alone. Isolated, almost as if I were living on an island with no ships arriving to take me anywhere. I missed my friends, I missed cities, I missed being around people, but somehow I had convinced myself that I was stuck. With the help of my great friend Ryan, I learned that it’s sometimes as simple as just leaving. Miss your friends? Go see them. Miss a city? Go spend some time there. Feel like something is missing? Go after it. We are so good at telling ourselves how stuck we are, whether that’s in our careers, where we live, or life in general. All thanks to these magical societal rules we’ve been following since birth. Get good grades, find a good job, buy a nice house, find someone to share it with, have children, work hard, and save for retirement. And somewhere in all of that, we’re supposed to find happiness.
This isn’t another post about waking up, breaking free from society and discovering how amazing life suddenly becomes. No, it’s about understanding how simple life can be when we calm our insides down a little. When we stop worrying about what we’re supposed to be doing and start paying attention to what actually makes us happy. A life where you feel happy doesn’t need to be understood by anyone but you.
During these months, my heart has swung left, right, up and down. I’ve explored just about every path imaginable. Do I leave Montana? California? New York? Sweden? Maybe Copenhagen or Paris? Where should I go?! I’ve moved more times in my head this year than I have in the last decade. For the longest time I was looking at Texas, although I’m still not entirely sure why. My time spent there has been limited at best, but I liked the idea of it. It’s been hard on both the heart and mind, especially when you live the way I do, close to nature and far removed from the noise of the world today. Up here in the mountains, you have a lot of time to sit with your thoughts and emotions. Good? Bad? I’d argue both, but in the end, pretty amazing.
I’ve imagined myself in beautiful houses, interesting neighborhoods, surrounded by new people and experiences. It’s rather easy to fall in love with the idea of somewhere else. But somewhere along the way, I started questioning what I was actually looking for. No matter where I go, if I’m not true to my own passions, dreams and the things that genuinely excite me, I’ll eventually feel the same way. Maybe I would have loved Texas, but I would still be bringing myself along. I think we sometimes confuse the excitement of something new with being happy. And while I love that excitement, I’ve come to understand that what I’m really looking for is something much calmer.
Work has been particularly difficult this year. Since the fire, concentrating has felt almost impossible. As a creative, I rely heavily on my emotional side. I put a piece of myself into everything I design, and when my mind is occupied by losing my home, there’s very little room left for creativity. I could force myself to produce something, but it would be half-assed work, and nobody needs that. What brought me back was, surprisingly, artificial intelligence. I’ve become fascinated with the idea of building a small support system around myself, using technology to help with things that would normally require an agency full of people. More on that another time, but what matters here is that I started feeling creative again. I found myself waking up with ideas, wanting to explore things, and genuinely excited about what I was doing.
And that’s when I started realizing how much I actually love living in Montana. I love nature. I love waking up when the sun rises and going to bed when the sun goes down. I love the quiet mornings, the mountains, the dogs, and the freedom to spend my days doing things that matter to me. My rhythm in life has never felt more peaceful than it does here. After my accident, nature became my medicine, allowing me to slow down and find my way back to myself. And now, after the fire, I think it’s doing much the same thing.
I still love cities. New York, Copenhagen, Paris, and everything that comes with being surrounded by people, culture and interesting places. I’ve written before about human connection, and living in nature certainly doesn’t mean I no longer need it. But why have I spent so much time convincing myself that I need to choose between the two? Why can’t I live in Montana and spend time in the cities I love? Why does missing my friends suddenly mean I need to move somewhere else? Looking back, I think I confused feeling isolated after the fire with needing to change my entire life.
Ryan was right. You can just leave. But leaving doesn’t necessarily mean moving away or starting over. Sometimes it simply means going after whatever you feel is missing. Seeing the friends you haven’t seen in a while, spending time somewhere that inspires you, or finding your way back to something you’re passionate about. We make these things so complicated for ourselves, when often the answer is much simpler than we want to believe.
I don’t regret spending these months questioning everything. I think I needed to. Losing my home forced me to look at my life in ways I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. I might still move somewhere else one day. Maybe New York, maybe Europe, or perhaps I’ll finally figure out what it was about Texas that had me so interested. But I no longer feel like I need to make that decision simply because something in my life has changed.
For a long time after the fire, I felt trapped on that imaginary island, waiting for someone to arrive and take me somewhere else. Ryan helped me understand that I could leave whenever I wanted. What I’ve learned since is that I don’t necessarily want to leave. I just needed to know that I could.
And perhaps that’s what these ten months have really taught me. Freedom isn’t always about going somewhere else or changing everything around you. Sometimes it’s simply being able to live the life that makes you happy, without feeling the need to explain it to anyone.
-cb
🫶☕️❤️Bra skrivet❤️