East Coast Girl
We relocated from the Midwest to the east coast last summer because my husband received a new career opportunity, and while it’s cliché to say, “The east coast is soooo different!”, there’s no other word to describe our lives.
We left behind our family and friends, our church, our home. My mental-health doctor. I no longer teach and instead work five days a week in a corporate office. I couldn’t have imagined that for myself a year ago, nor would I have wanted to. We like our new church and are making friends here, and I absolutely enjoy that the beach is a five-minute walk from my house, but life has changed dramatically.
My interests have changed too. Growth is a part of life, if you’re living right, which is another cliché. Forgive me. My original goal with this website was to write about the intersection of mental illness, faith, and creativity, but I’m not sure of that goal now. I may have boxed myself in by narrowing my writing to those topics, because my life has many facets beyond them.
At the same time, I’m not going to focus on every area of my life and make this a whole-life blog where I discuss the above plus parenting and homeschooling and my latest pair of shoes. But I need to uncover my purpose here, and it’s going to take effort, patience, and practice.
Minimalism, mental health, and writing have consumed my brain this past year and a half. Now that we’ve moved, I better understand how much “stuff” we own. It’s not pretty. We’re crammed into a house that’s less than half the size of the one we left behind, and while I’m grateful for our new home (and its proximity to the beach), I also see a deeper need for minimalism.
I especially feel the need to minimize because of how clutter affects my mental health. I’m clawing my way out of a depression that overwhelmed me this past September, and I need room to breathe and just be. So maybe that means this space will explore minimalism and mental health, or maybe not, but I’m going to write (whether here or elsewhere) until I figure it out.
In the meantime, hello. :)