The Quest for Ordinary 🌀

or, what this project is really about

many things have shaped me — the sun, the water, and this person

I am leaving L.A. in 11 days – moving my books, clothes, and ice bath into storage and getting rid of everything else. This city has been my home for almost 9 years, and I feel a healthy mix of peace and grief arise in my chest as I start to pack my things and envision the journey ahead. I don’t know when or if I’m coming back here.

L.A. is the place I wanted to move to when I was a kid. It was everything I dreamed it would be and more. This city has given me my life, my best friends, my career. But: it has also taken a lot out of me. It is the representation of a kind of ambition that I used to have, but no longer do. I walk these streets now, and I see ghost versions of myself everywhere. I have changed, and I don’t think this version of me fits here.

My choice to leave is accompanied by the surrendering of everything I’ve known to be mine these last 9 years – my dreams, aspirations, identity, partnerships, friendships. Everything. I’m packing all that stuff up and putting it in boxes, too. This is by far the hardest part.

But if I’m honest with myself, I have put this off for over a year. Way longer, depending on how I look at it. It’s hard to justify leaving people you love when you don’t know where you’re going.

This quote from Boyd Varty’s The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life has become a kind of guidepost for me in the last few months as I’ve made the hard decision to walk away from everything that I’ve known:

“I don’t know where we’re going, but I know exactly how to get there.”

Well, maybe I don’t know exactly, but there is a compass inside of me that does. Call it soul, daimon, dharma, intuition, God, my wild, or whatever fits your mold. The call for me now is to give myself over to this guiding force, and embark on a kind of “quest.”

My first goal on this “quest” is to down-shift into a new way of being that I’ve tasted, but have never sustained for more than a few days. My first stop will be Austin, Texas – for about a month and a half. Every time I’ve traveled there, I’ve felt more myself. It feels like the right place to bring me down a gear or two before I head out on my grand adventure.

My best guess now is that I’ll be on the road for 6 months, but you just never know. I hope to share field notes from this journey in real time on this Substack. Mostly because I’ve always wondered what it’d be like if Eat, Pray, Love or Wild or The Pilgrimage had been newsletters, not memoirs. Not to put myself anywhere near the same category as Liz Gilbert or Cheryl Strayed or Paulo Coelho, but I have just always wished one of them had mapped the terrain of transformation and shared it while they were inside of it.

So, I feel the call to share this unfolding while it’s happening. I’ve thought long and hard about whether to bring my camera on this trip. But that feels like it’s a step too far, and like it’d disrupt the transformation I can feel taking place in me. If all this quest amounts to is a meme-ified trek around the world where I just capture shots of myself doing cool things, it will have been a failure.

Maybe I’ll change my mind about all of this later on. If this quest does its job, I’m sure I will. But for now, my commitment is: I will write here as much as I can without disrupting the experience of my own becoming. This feels like the right compromise and cadence. I am in a fragile and malleable state right now, so that takes precedent.

I’m sure it’ll be messy at first, and maybe always. I know it’ll be awhile before I’ve shaken the rust off my writing voice. Regardless, I hope you find some comfort and inspiration in wherever this story takes me as you live into the Quest of your own life.

Now to explain the “title” of this little writing project: “The Quest for Ordinary.” Full transparency: I think the word “quest” is lame, and the word “ordinary” sends out a red alert to every bit of worldly ambition left in me. So, yes, calling it this feels pretty ick to me, but there’s reason beyond logic for it.

I heavily considered calling this project the quest for self, or God, or magic, or truth, or freedom. This Substack was originally named “The Quest for Something.” Any of those names would have been true, too.

But when I really stop and think about my intention for this journey, it is so that someday I can live inside this moment I have envisioned a thousand times:

I am 85 years-old — lounging in an Adirondack chair on my front porch watching the sunset. I’ve got a cup of tea and a half-smile on my face. It’s Sunday evening, or at least it feels like it. I can hear all my people laughing from the other room about God knows what. A single tear drips down my face. And the only words that come to me are: “Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.” I’m taken by the beauty in this simple moment. The sunset, their laughter, the breath in my lungs — it’s all almost too much for me to handle. But still, here I am. I’m not trying to be somewhere else or somebody else. Not worried about death on the horizon. Not stewing in the regret of all the things I didn’t do in this lifetime or feeling guilty about the things I could be doing now to make the world a better place. I’m just sitting in a chair, staring at the sunset, and feeling deeply in love with my life and the people in it.

This is the vision I am fighting for, and why this Substack is called The Quest for Ordinary over any of those other names. Because, if I’m honest, what I really want out of life is to attune myself to experience the magic in ordinary people, places, and moments.

I have spent the last 10 years chasing the opposite — trying to use my pain as fuel to become someone and do things that my ego was proud of. It has brought me no peace and no closer to my soul’s true path.

So that’s what this quest is about. I’m dedicating it to my 85 year old self, my 22 year old self, and my 9 year old self — for many reasons I am sure I will share as we go. I’m also dedicating it to the people in my lineage that have fought hard for one of their descendants to arrive at a moment when she can do something a little bit insane like this. And most importantly, I’m writing it all down for every person that is living and working in a way that feels insulting to their own soul, but doesn’t yet know how to down shift into a new way.

I hope we find it together.

Love,

Kate 🌀