I can never decide– is Wyoming a solitary place? Or a lonely one? Two very different vibrations to me, solitary feeling calm and intentional and lonely feeling heavy and imposing. 

Despite its size and its bustling energy, I often felt incredibly lonely in Chicago. On Saturdays I used to walk to yoga in the morning 45 minutes each way, and then stop at the bougie grocery store for lunch on the way home, just attempting to run down the day’s clock. The glory of my otherwise planlessness was always lost on me, as I lived in a world of comparison and witness to how much “everyone else” was “doing”. I felt like moving to Wyoming would firmly shift me into the solitary vibration– sure I would know no one here and never have plans, but that would be chosen intentionally and thus lend me some stance of fierce independence.

Now almost three years later and on week whatever of solo quarantine– I can see that we don’t get to chose between solitude and loneliness and they often come as a package deal. I know how lucky I am to be in one of the places that could reasonably open again soon, and which has already opened in some respects just in the longer days and greener mountains. But there’s the knowingness too that even when this is all over– I still live, work, do all the things 95% alone. It’s been very unavoidable to come to this conclusion.

I think even my California road trip was in some level of avoidance of this direct, challenging reality. I thought if I got out of the house for the snowed in Winter months and went on a great journey that might be enough to make me always the “sparkly” version of myself. But coming back here to nothing but this cabin isolation time I’d so hoped to avoid, I can see that getting to be sparkly is a bigger undertaking that just packing up a Subaru and heading for the ocean.

Almost everything in life is out of our control, certainly this time included. And the pursuits, the reversals of circumstances we think will make us happy sometimes don’t entirely. But maybe that is okay. I’m so much different than I ever was in Chicago but also so much the same. In the solitude and the loneliness, in the empowerment to figure it all out, in the belief that maybe one day I won’t have to.

Moment of Gratitude: And until then in that place where the morning sky is a gradient of magic and colors. Like that light shines on everything I could ever experience or be.