A Purple Life

However, I am curious to see if I can keep up this pace when we’re nomads exploring new locations instead of when I’m a bum sitting in the backyard watching birds and turning pages all day I think I’m finally getting the hang of this sleeping thing after 3 decades 😉 and just need to be patient and kind with myself as I acclimate to a new location or situation. I continue to get better at being fully present in my life and giving my focused attention to the things I’m doing and people I’m with. Next month we’ll be exploring Atlanta, GA and the month after that we head to Portland, ME and begin our nomad life in the Northeastern US!

This preparation for moving made me reflect on the last time I actually took all my stuff with me for our cross-country move from NYC to Seattle in 2015. On top of that, you have to have boxes, packing materials and moving blankets to get your stuff from point A to point B. When I started looking at estimates of how much it would cost to get all these accessories needed to move, it was too much for my brain to handle. Originally we were going to use one of their enclosed Cube options they call a ReloCube, but I discovered that those are not allowed to be parked in lower Manhattan (where we lived at the time), so instead we had a tractor trailer parked outside our house for an hour or so…not sure how that’s better Manhattan, but ok 🙂 . I’m getting too old for this shit”, but at the ripe age of 25 when I moved across the country, I was totally physically capable of moving my stuff myself and did so to save a pretty penny.

Anyway, I’m not here to give you a history lesson, but if you’re interested in the origin of the toxic productivity that is currently permeating American culture and how it’s actually making our society worse, here are two awesome videos by one of my favorite YouTubers: There might be something wrong with me, but ever since I was young, I would look at large, expensive purchases like houses and cars and instead of seeing some type of freedom or feeling any excitement, my brain would start to think of all the ways those things would be a chain around my foot. The big ticket items in life never appealed to me and at times looked like an unnecessary burden and the things that actually bring me joy are quite inexpensive. This led to me interviewing like a fiend and job hopping like a mad woman until I started making six figures a few days after my 27th birthday (so close to 26 😉 ).

Websites such as TurboTax and TaxAct claimed to be free and then when you were almost done inputting all your information, they always told me that actually your taxes are too complicated (they just included a W-2…) and that I would have to pay $30-50 instead. I’ve been using Credit Karma to check my credit score since I learned what a credit score was 😉 However, after I had input all of my information, Credit Karma Tax asked if I would like to check if I would receive a stimulus credit, and despite reading the news fairly regularly and having looked into how the stimulus payments worked, I didn’t realize that if you don’t receive all the stimulus (and I had not) In the past, I have submitted my taxes on a random day in March or even April and received an email from Credit Karma Tax that it was successfully submitted to the IRS…and then two minutes later, an email that my tax return was accepted by the IRS 🙂 .