(if you don’t feel like reading ^^that’s a read-along!^^)
WOW! hello beautiful Reader! how have you been? I’ve missed you very much. Have you had a cup of tea today? Enough water? Go ahead and pause …
right
now
and make yourself a cup. go on - this silly newsletter ain’t goin anywhere.
🍵
delicious 🍯 now, where were we?
ah, yes. I was casually sauntering into your inbox after almost 4 months but who’s really counting anymore? well, if you are then i’ll give you some context. winter is for hibernating, or at least that’s what i’m going with. but now, we are well into fickle spring here in the northern hemisphere and it’s screaming fertility and i am in the throes of my [first] saturn return and if i was enlightened i would say something profound about the virtues of patience with the ebbs and flows of life, like the seasons, but it somehow took me 29 years to start tracking my [menstrual] cycle and so sure, maybe i have been making an infinitesimal effort to honor a more cyclical lifestyle but i’d be lying if i said i had any sort of control over my creativity and i sure gotta long way to go to profundity.
do you like it when i get personal right off the bat or do you prefer to be eased in?
now that the “hibernation” period is over I am spring-ing (🥴) back to life. and not only that but i am renewing some things, naturally. refreshing! :pops top: ahhh! have you noticed anything different? oh, Change you sweet, familiar friend. All Life is Change so we’d do well to learn to pivot. and pivoting we are. we have a new name— the anti-experience! we’re doing some anti-curated life and travel that i envision growing into a collective of sorts and this newsletter is now an extension of it. it is still me, rambling.
anti-curated life and travel is what i know. it’s anti because it’s not pretty or conventional. you have to be willing to make sacrifices, you have to learn to adapt while staying true to yourself. you will get no Top 10 Digital Nomad Destination lists here. take what you see at your own risk. i have a complicated relationship with travel. for me, at the absolute least, it has to be rooted in an intention to truly connect with the culture and its people. everything is an energy exchange. it’s important that you contribute. that you aren’t taking more than you’re giving. i’ve never been rich in money, but there are many types of currency. Once you really get out there, you start to see how small and connected the world really is. i’m here to help bridge some gaps. i’m here, not to show you, but to truly share it with you + those i meet along the way. to connect. to support. to grow, together. i see an economy where we are supporting each other with our gifts and talents. where we are not looking outside to faceless industries and institutions to get their acts together. where we put things directly in each other’s hands, be it physically or digitally, and can feel the vibrations of gratitude merging us. destination- everywhere and nowhere ;)
my entire life i wanted to see the world. i’m a creature of the earth. i want to anti-experience it. it is a natural and evolutionary propensity for homo sapiens to move. the first time i ever did inner child work i closed my eyes, sat in meditation, and asked Little Lex what they needed right then. we were in my childhood backyard and as kindly as possible i told them they could have whatever it was that they wanted, that all they had to do was tell me what it was. a hug, a hand, a treat, a what? and you know what that bish said? nothing! they smiled real big and took off running. sprinting, rather! and not in a cute ha-ha way where they’re looking back because they want you to chase them. no. when Lil Lex was 2 years old they made the mistake of looking back to say “hey watch this” while running through the house and then immediately fell and cracked their head open on the corner where the walls meet and had to get 7 stitches. so now, they wanted to run unbothered and unobserved. they wanted to express without having to explain. they wanted to feel free. I try to honor Lil Lex as often as i can. that bish <3
many of the most impactful moments in my life have happened through the generosity of others. I have met strangers turned chosen family while stranded at bus stations in foreign places. strangers have offered invitations, help, and places to sleep more often than most of my own family. the willingness of others to open their doors for me has directly opened my own Doors of Perception, no psychedelics necessary (but always welcomed). frankly, we’re better together. no, i’m not on psychedelics right now.
we are taught to fear The Other, to have our guard up, to be in competition with each other. but all of my biggest blessings arrive when i fully open myself up to receiving them. and duh, mishaps and sketchy things happen. you don’t get the biscuits without some fuck-its and risk-its. the anti-experience isn’t afraid of that; it doesn’t want to hide, it wants to feel alive. it wants to run with bare feet.
currently, i have access to a small backyard covered in poison oak save for 7 small concrete squares that provide a landing place once stepping out of the backdoor. so it is there, atop the concrete slabs, where i have begun a garden out of recycled plastic containers. it isn’t grandiose or glamorous in the slightest. it is, however, resourceful, mobile, and adaptable which, in my reality, has always proved more rewarding than grandioseness and glamour. soon, we will clear the poison and the place will feel expansive. for now, we do what we can with what we’ve got. it’s finding abundance in the mundane. the macro is in the micro, after all. the pattern of snail shells is also found in our milky way galaxy.
they say tend to the garden in your own backyard and i fully agree. my backyards just happen to change or rotate often. that must be why i end up keeping them mobile and adaptable. a friend once mentioned “the millennial jet set dream” to me and i didn’t know what she meant. it is in my roots to migrate. it’s in all of ours. humans have been migrating since the beginning, are migrating now, and will probably be migrating a lot more in the near future… since i was a child i’ve understood that there is much for me to learn that i am unable to do in the land that i was raised, even if i didn’t understand what exactly that was. fast forward to taking leaps and following desires to places that i wouldn’t even find out i had some kind of connection, be it ancestral, cosmic, pedagogical, etc., until much later. the body knows. the soul knows. but you have to be willing to follow the subtlest pings. you have to listen.
in the spirit of new endeavors i will be committing more to this newsletter from here on out. i don’t do well with routine so i am seeing it more as a ritual that i am able to share with you! to be more intentional (that word again..), to commit to a practice, to reflect and get vulnerable, to find the magic in the mundane.
I am opening up paid subscriptions for the lowest price substack will allow ($5/month) to this newsletter where I will share writing OR a podcast (!) episode to your inbox once a week. you’ll get the true grit of the anti-experience. perhaps one day i will finish coding its website. if you’re subscribed to this you’ll be the first to know-it-all. if you have instagram you can follow along here.
free subscribers will get the occasional newsletter as always <3
if this newsletter has ever made you feel something and you want to support the anti-experience please consider becoming a paid subscriber. or maybe you wanna buy me a tea, since i’m quitting coffee :( as someone who currently doesn’t have an income the support is deeply appreciated!
i love you, i’m happy to be back, i hope you enjoyed the read-along, i turn “30” in 1 week. i still feel like Little Lex. big kiss to you, thank you for being here and being a part of this community 🤝🌺🌞
here’s a photo of me emerging from the depths of winter to play with the light of spring. my eye color is different ?? i must have i shape-shifted down there.
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