Over the past year I have learned to trust myself and my intuition… or when all else fails, at least trust the universe.
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When I visited Charleston back in March / April earlier this year (2022), I fell hard. I’ve talked about so many of the things that made me choose this city to be my new home in previous posts, but I don’t think it really hit me that I was “home” until about 7 weeks after moving here in a more permanent way at the end of June 2022.
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Before I tell the story of that realization, let’s go back to 2013. I was in college, studying to be a structural engineer, and I saved up all of my humanities credits so that I could spend a semester abroad in Florence, Italy. The goal was to do fun stuff like take Italian and Art History instead of more math for a little while. Don’t get me wrong, I love math… but I wanted a bit of a break at some point during college. So for the spring semester of 2013, I lived in Florence. I had an amazing host mom, Laura, a lovely roommate, Liz, and a city of magic just waiting to be explored.
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I love everything about Florence. The art, the history, the streets that make you feel like you could be walking with Michelangelo in 1500, and of course the food. I spent my days exploring every inch, learning every street, and really soaking up everything that makes Florence so unique and wonderful. That semester was one of the only times in my life that I have felt so truly right in my location. Every day I went out the front door excited by the new things I could discover, fueled by an endless well of curiosity for my temporary home.
A while ago I listened to a podcast interview and the host asked the guest the following question: “with whom do you breathe the deepest?” That question really resonated with me, and as I sat pondering my own answer to it, I realized that for some people, the answer is other people. For others, it’s a place, and for some folks it’s both. I think I fall into the both category. I have certain members of what I like to call my found family that I just feel connected to on a deeper level. Being able to talk and share ideas and dreams with them makes me feel the most seen. But while that connection to people is important, I find that I gain equal grounding if I am in the right location.
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When I think back to my time in Florence, it truly was a time when I breathed the deepest. When I embraced life fully and let myself be led by curiosity ahead of almost anything else. Over the years I have looked for another place that sparked the same level of curiosity and wonder that Florence did. The same level of peace of mind. There were so many days that I took a walk and simply stopped at a beautiful piazza or osteria or market and just soaked it all in. The day I left Florence was I think the day I started my journey to finding another place to call home that sparked a similar feeling of joy and belonging.
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After college I got a job outside of NYC. I had always loved the city and spent many weekends exploring, but at the end of the day it was always just a little too big. A little too exhausting. A fantastic place to visit, but not one I could call “home”. I lived north of NYC for four years and after that I got a bit antsy and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. My company had an office there right downtown, so I moved into a cool historical neighborhood and traded my small NY suburb town, my train access to a city of millions, and a driving commute for a city of 600,000 and an office I could walk to.
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I ended up living in Baltimore for two years (sadly 1.3 ish of those were during covid). Regardless of covid, I came to really enjoy my time there. There was great access to the inner harbor (water is important for me), the food scene was surprisingly great (don’t even get me started on the GREAT vegan options in town!), and there were a lot of really beautiful areas. Baltimore definitely still has it’s rough spots, but not everything is like the Wire y’all. After a year in the office and another one in lockdown isolation, I realized that I had made some good friends and enjoyed my time in Baltimore… but once again it wasn’t “home”.
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It was around January 2021 that I hatched my nomad plan. I was already working remotely from my team back in NY, and then we were all working remotely during covid. So I got the ok from my boss that when my lease ended in June 2021, and hopefully rona would have calmed down, that I could hit the road. I’ve talked a lot about my reasons for the nomadic year, but at the root of them all is that same desire to test drive places until I could find the one that could re-kindle that spark of curiosity, wonder, and joy that living in Florence ignited.
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I spent the past year traveling around the country, visiting family and old friends, seeing new places, making new friends, and giving quite a few places a good test drive. When I got to Charleston in the spring I had a feeling this was it. I gave myself a little over two months to really prove it to myself, and then I left and moved on for a while to make sure I missed it when I was gone. Sure enough I did, so I went online apartment shopping and by the end of June I had driven back across the country, gotten my keys, gotten a U-haul and transferred all of my stuff out of my storage unit back in Baltimore into my new apartment down in Charleston.
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I quickly settled in and picked up some routines. I work from home, so a lot of my initial efforts were put towards making my apartment live and work friendly. I started exploring on the weekends, and then added exploring on random weeknights too. I was inspired to get my camera out more and more often to capture this new beautiful place I get to call home. About 7 weeks into living here full time, I spent a lovely Saturday afternoon Downton. I did some shopping, had a delicious meal, and returned home to take my dog for an evening walk. On the drive home I had this need to go to the beach. So I got home, grabbed my dog, and drove down to Folly Beach.
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I parked my car and little Fred and I got to the beach right as sun was setting. We ended up walking for over an hour and after the sun went down we walked by the light of the almost full moon. The fact that I could hop in the the car and within a matter of 20 minutes be walking on the beach, toes in the waves and sand, was a pretty big factor for moving here in the first place. But after walking for an hour we got close to the beach entrance where we had parked at and I realized I wasn’t ready to leave. I picked up Fred and waded into the waves a bit further. The moon had risen beautifully and by standing in the water we were right in the middle of a glowing moonbeam.
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As I stood there, breathing in the smell of the ocean and being grateful for the place I had finally found to call home, my body finally caught up with my head. My brain knew we had found home, but the rest of me hadn’t quite been able to believe it yet. So as I stood there on that beach, bathed in moonlight, holding my little dog, I was a bit overcome … and promptly started bawling my eyes out.
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Now don’t worry, these weren’t tears of sadness, but rather ones of joy. After 9 years of looking, for what at times seemed to be in vain, I had finally found my new home. I was finally able to set down my bags, both literally and more importantly figuratively. I had been carrying around this emotional baggage for 9 years, never feeling able to truly set down everything and just let go, just feel at peace enough to let go. If I hadn’t found “home” yet, I couldn’t truly rest. I didn’t realize how heavy some of those bags had become.
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As I stood there on that beach in the moonlight, I let myself cry. I let my body and my emotions and my heart set down everything they had been carrying and sat in the freedom, in the peace. I let myself come to terms with the fact that I had been carrying a lot. Years of time spent dissatisfied in a job, walking around the wrong town, living in the wrong climate, and just feeling like I was in the wrong place. Within the past year I have not only changed jobs to one that I feel much happier about, I have found the right town, the right climate, the right place. So standing there, I let all of that baggage fall into the waves and just wash away.
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Maybe this is a step too far on the woo-woo train, but as I was standing in the moonlight, I checked on the constellations. And my Scorpio was eating the moon. No idea what this means but it was interesting.
That may be a little too woo-woo for some folks, but my visceral bodily response to finally realizing I was home made me realize I had finally done it, I could finally stop looking. What a truly wonderful moment.
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Now don’t think this will stop me from being an avid traveler and explorer. If anything finding the right spot has refilled my spring of curiosity, where being in the wrong places had almost depleted it. So you can look forward to more adventures and more victineraries, but hopefully you can join me in the joy that comes with returning home after a trip, taking off your shoes, and being able to truly relax.
Thank you for coming along on this lengthy look into the past and present of how I finally ended my year (or 9) of traveling to settle into my new home here in Charleston, SC.
~ Happy Travels, and happy home hunting, V ~