Life has been so packed for the past however long it’s been. In the past few days, I’ve been able to unwind a bit, due mainly to forcing myself to take the entire four day Thanksgiving weekend off from all five (six?) of my jobs.

OK, I was forcing myself at first, but then the sheer pleasure of not working sunk in.

And let me tell you, three and a half days without doing anything I’m obligated to do was so very much needed, even if I folded on that last day and did a bunch of work because a strange bout of inertia kept me away from anything else.

I’ve now entered what some friends and I are referring to as Self Care December (SCD). I hate December. It’s true.

Growing up, I was all about the carols and the tree and togetherness, but then shit got weird: family started disintegrating and death anniversaries became a reality and I realized that even though I’m perfectly fine with my oodles of outsider status the other 11 months of the year, it’s way too hard to be ‘different’ in December. I don’t like consumerism or plastic; Christianity makes me pretty uncomfortable; I don’t have a traditional romantic relationship; and the complex emotions that arise, coupled with some dear-hearted friends who really try to help, just make the experience kind of a mess.

Part of SCD is that I’m taking a lot of walks. I love walking. I love focusing on a given color, or my breathing. I love getting a feel for the city, or talking to the trees and bushes, even just in my mind.

In the past two days, I’ve wandered around walking a lot. A LOT. Someone mentions Christmas, I feel my anxiety start to rise — even though my life is pretty rad and amazing (which just compounds the anxiety) — and I just take off down the street.

As I’ve engaged this practice, I’ve felt a familiar longing creeping back into my soul. It’s hard to articulate, but it has to do with the urge to wander the world combined with the urge to establish home.

At this point in my life I can feel these different paths in front of me. I feel like I’m at a crossroads. The sacred sexuality route is calling, amplified by a sudden preponderance of opportunities to explore it at all levels. Do I want to explore it just for my own personal sake, or bring it into my work with clients? I don’t know. There’s the energy healing path. Mostly for my work with clients, but clearly it would be an experiential path as well. There’s the part of me that very much wants to follow the path that is partially laid out already, working with ancestral and earth-bound spirits, and incorporating that into my work. And there’s my commitment to furthering my understanding of astrology, particularly in the therapeutic context.

Clearly all of these things are connected. But there’s that whole ‘time’ thing to think about.

Days like today have made me feel homesick in a way. For the days in grad school when I got to wander and just do what my soul wanted me to. I would wake up, write, go on a walk, come home and make food, take a long walk to a coffee shop, write, ponder, drink coffee (or whiskey) and stare out the window, walk home, make food, write… That kind of behavior feels like home. And it feels like freedom.

Space and spaciousness are themes lately. Breathing into spaciousness. Imagining space around the parts of my body and my emotions that are constricted or anxious, breathing spaciousness into the bad emotions and breathing out to create space for the new. Finding the space to do the work. Finding a space to live. Finding a space to call home.

Then there’s that conflict that always arises. My soul longs for the space to do the work I love on a full time basis. Working with people. Striving for change. My soul also longs for the space to wander empty beaches and silent forests. But I have to pay rent. I have to pay rent in a city that is seeing rent increases more pronounced than anywhere else in the country — and the home I’m currently living in, while incredible, is temporary.

It makes me think of the Devil card in the tarot. It makes me think of my own general interpretation of the card, which emphasizes an understanding that we are here, in the material world, for a reason. That reason is not to shun the body and materiality, but rather to play here. To enjoy. To learn how to work with stone and steel and flesh and bone.

It is when those things, the money and the desire for tactile goods to create security and comfort, take precedence that we find ourselves chained. The gravity of the material is real — but there has to be space, too. Space for the mind and the heart and soul to merge and be explored. Finding the balance — honoring the structures while not making them the center and becoming chained to them — is an ongoing lesson.

So I wander through the city, now that I’ve been able to do something other than focus on work and family drama, now that I’ve started coming back into myself and the work — MY work — and it hits me: I want a home. I’m ready for a home — for MY home. But I also want to wander.

This dichotomy is so present in so many areas of my life — the tension in my life as a person practicing non-monogamy, for example. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I want primary bonds and long term intimacy and someone(s) who feels like home. But I also want freedom. I want the freedom to explore other people, other places, other things. And people keep telling me that the two things — home and freedom — can’t exist together. That I have to choose.

I’ll admit that I’m stubborn, and that when people tell me I can’t do something I’m prone to dig my heels in. But I don’t think I’m doing that now. I want home, and I want freedom. I want to do the work I’m meant to do and I want the money to be able to live where I want, and probably on my own. I want a home base and the ability to wander the globe. I want primary intimate and sexual bonds and I want the freedom to explore that with more than one person if needed. I want core commitment and family, too. I want the space to explore anything that’s going to help me help others. And I want the freedom to do it my way.

And so I leave you with a poem by Rilke, who really says everything I need to, much better than I ever have:

You see, I want a lot
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.

So many are alive who don’t seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces
Of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those who grip you for survival.

You are not dead yet, it’s not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.

— From Book of Hours