For most of my adult life, I’ve had a sort of spiel for when adults (real adults) ask about my life. You know how it is. When you consistently get questions or remarks about something, you develop a sort of script. You field the little remarks here and there about whatever it is and chuckle politely and (in my case) listen to people defensively explain why they could never …“fill in the blank”.
This has happened a lot because for almost the entirety of my adult life so far, something about it has been unusual.
Our housing situation has been consistently unusual. When Kelton & I first got married, we lived in the city in a row home with three other people. After that we lived in the woods, in a basement apartment of a family we were friends with. Then we lived in a tiny house for a year, parked first in the driveway of said family, and then in a meadow on a farm. From there we moved to a wooded property with Kelton’s parents and two other couples.
Our other life choices have also been what you might call fringe. We started a vegan cheese company. We eat things we find in the woods. We wear weird barefoot shoes. We’re vegan. We were dedicated minimalists for a while there. We’ve chosen to be childfree.
One of our more impactful unusual choices is that we’ve often chosen to have more time instead of more money. Until recently, this left us unable to do a lot of things our peers were doing, like traveling and going out a lot. On the other hand, we’ve probably each worked a lot fewer cumulative hours than peers our age and that’s left us with a lot of time to cultivate our personal interests. Where many of our peers are starting to figure out what feels meaningful to them in life after first securing stability, we’re only just starting to venture into stability, after spending much time figuring out what makes life feel meaningful to us.
And now, after several years of being dedicated weirdos, we’re in the position of switching lanes. By privilege and generational wealth, we now have a house and land that is ours to steward. And we’ve decided it’s important enough to us to keep those things that we need to make a different choice. We need to make more money in order to have those things for the long term. Which puts us in the position that many folks are in during the few years after college: how can we maximize our earning potential while also prioritizing our pleasure? It’s strange to look at life this way after so long of having earning potential as a lower priority.
I’m now an accounting assistant (working my way to accountant — something I never thought I’d be excited about). We live in a regular house. I work from home. Kelton also has a day job. We have a cat, and pretty much live 9-5 lives. A lot of the unusual choices are still present, but we look a little more normal.
We care for our land and garden and I guess from the outside those would be considered a hobby, just like any hobby that someone has outside of work. Of course, it doesn’t feel that way internally. That feels like the more important thing, while accounting is just something I spend time on to make money.
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At the same time, through trauma therapy I’m accessing more experience of my universal humanity. Self-compassion is a concept that was articulated by Kristin Neff, Ph.D. as having three core competencies: universal humanity, self-kindness and mindfulness.
Going through trauma makes you feel cut off from the rest of the world, uniquely broken and different. This is isolation—the opposite experience of universal humanity. I would carry this belief into social situations and it would cause me to act in ways which ended up confirming the idea that I was different and something was wrong with me. (Acting like no one will understand you frequently results in no one understanding you, imagine that!)
Strengthening my self-compassion muscles has slowly shifted my relationship with my universal humanity. I know now, in my body, that I have never been the only person to experience anything that I’ve gone through, that other people have feelings just like mine, and that rather than being different than everyone, I’m very much INCLUDED, I am LIKE everyone else. And if I articulate my experiences, there’s going to be someone out there who relates. There’s something very comforting in that fact.
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So between these two currents in my life: externally looking more mainstream from a life choices perspective, and also internally feeling more included in regular humanity, I’ve been swiftly flowing down a river of “wow, I’m really just normal” toward a lake of normie-hood —something I previously never could have imagined.
All of this leaves some lingering identity questions — who am I if not for these identifiers, these things I have relied on to feel special and different from most other people?
But the answer also feels very present (probably thanks to lots of time in therapy) — I don’t have to be different to matter. I don’t have to be intentionally poor, or live in a small space, or be a minimalist, or even be vegan (which I don’t plan on changing anytime soon). None of those things are really sturdy enough to carry an identity anyway.
If I enjoy my life, and like myself, and find meaning and value in what I’m doing, that’s what matters. I don’t need to justify my changing life choices to anyone. And honestly, no one else really cares. No one is tracking how intentional I am about every aspect of my life. No one is keeping score of how ethical I am and giving me a grade.
I can just… live. And right now that means being a little more normie. And you know what? I’m loving it.
As always, thanks for reading!
Love, Sallie