how to craft a compass

a break in our regularly scheduled Helene programming and an installment of Ask Amy

Sometimes people ask me questions, and I overthink them, and then pretend I’m Dear Sugar.

Hey Amy, I’ve been sitting on a question for you, and I want you to feel encouraged to answer it at your leisure // take all of the time you want to respond:

At 27, I feel Very ready to depart from Indiana, to grow roots within a new community, and although I spent the summer traveling to possible new places to live, I do not feel a pull in any specific direction. I want to leave, but do not know where to go - exciting and terrifying!

I have a solid foundation of savings…and thus pose the question to you -

How would you recommend I go about crafting a compass for myself? What questions would you recommend I ask myself? Overall, any advice on how to navigate this?

Dear compass-crafter,

What questions should you ask yourself? There are the same kinds of questions that a college-bound high school junior is asked to consider: do you like a big city, a small town, or a rural location? What do you want to study (what field do you want to work in)? And then there are, of course, all the practical questions that you already know to ask, about jobs and property values and LGBTQ+ spaces and woman-friendly laws and bookstores and music venues and arthouse theaters. (Of course books and venues and theaters count as practical things, and of course you don’t need me to mention them.)

You’re looking for something deeper than that. Dare I say something a little mystical. Some divine guidance. Some assurance you’ll get it right. Aren’t we all. Instead, you’re just going to have to jump, Soren.

Three times in my life I’ve let people be the true north for my decisions (college, California, Durham) and I don’t regret any of them.

Other times, curiosity and desire spurred my moves (to Southeast Asia, and Seattle).

And then some moves have been primarily about choosing stability. Indiana was that kind of move for me; at the time, we were choosing between a 1-2 year position with the State department in Laos or the job in Indiana. We had a toddler and were ready to have a second child, and I had moved three times in the last five years. We needed a little grounding. Honestly, Asheville might have been that kind of a move, too.

I think for the last five years Indiana has been, for you, the same sort of home base: it was stability and a supportive little community when those were the things you needed most. And now, your roots are wound too tightly in too small of a pot, and you need to grow. In this next move, you don’t need to prioritize stability, and it seems there isn’t a person your heart wants to follow. So maybe curiosity and desire can be your guide.

How delicious. You get to think about what you want.¹

The danger in that is that you will get stuck spiraling trying to figure out what you want MOST, what is the BEST, — that you will put pressure on the next place to be the perfect and ultimate place. But it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. It doesn’t have to last forever to be right. Curiosity and desire led me to places where I only lived for two or three years when I was your age, but they both changed my life in beautiful ways.

It’s easier, in making that kind of a leap of faith move, if you know at least one person who already lives where you’re going. But for you, I’m not sure that’s essential. You make friends and webs of connection as easily as gourds grow in compost. So choose a place you’re still curious about, a place you want to explore more, where you know you’ll be able to find work in the field you want, and jump.²

(Remember these compost-gourds we grew?)

If there’s one other thing I would prioritize now that I haven’t considered as much in the past, it’s climate. Not that you should look for a climate haven — we know now they don’t exist — but that you should look for a place that will make it easy for you to live a life that minimizes damage and nurtures your love for the non-human creatures you’ll live with. Where can you have a mostly walkable/bikeable life? Where you will be reminded of your essential interdependence, and be encouraged to live like it’s a reality? What landscapes do you already feel affection for?

I know what it means to leave Indiana, in particular. Back in 2017, when I believed it was probably time to leave, but we didn’t know yet what would be next, I did what I always do: I read books. I read all kinds of books about place and about the midwest in particular. I was still trying to love it. Thinking about leaving, I read two books that helped me imagine life in other places:

New Slow City was less helpful than I wanted it to be.³ Who’s Your City by Richard Florida looked at the big 5 characteristics psychologists study, and used various studies to map them on to regions in the USA. Perhaps this was ridiculous, but it seemed useful at the time — we saw that North Carolina, like Washington state, majored in “relaxed and creative” rather than “friendly and conventional” or “temperamental and uninhibited.”⁴ In fact, NC was about the only place in the eastern half of the USA where we could find a majority of people who leaned in that direction. North Carolina had mountains and oceans, lots of universities, vibrant arts and music and food scenes. We had lived a long time in a place where very little changed. Jack wanted a life that felt more like a stream than a pond — a place where things moved. And so, even before I was thinking about seminaries, NC was on our shared map as a potential landing spot.

We were thinking about where we would fit. I suppose at a time like this you can also think about where you can help: you know, your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger and all that. It just always feels a little opaque to me to think about before you’re there.

But if you want something mystical, do what I did when it was time to make the college decision, and lay out a fleece. You know the story: Gideon said, God, if you want me to do this, then make this fleece I’m leaving in the yard wet when I wake up in the morning. He woke up and realized that had been dumb. Dew, etc. So he tried again, asking God to make it dry, and God did, and Gideon knew what to do. At least, I think that’s how it goes — I didn’t look it up. I set out a fleece for God when I was 17, and it stayed dry, and so I followed my best friends to college. Maybe I just needed permission to choose love over some imaginary vision I had of myself and the kind of college I “should” go to. Whatever it was, I was glad to have it.

Maybe you don’t call Them “God” anymore, but the universe, whatever — it’s ok to ask for a sign.

A final thought, more for after this decision is made. You’re making one choice about where to move. But once you’re there, once you’re deciding to stay, you’ll have new choices about what it means to belong to a place. For me, to belong to a place means to be willing on some level to take on that place’s needs and imperfections as your own. I think of this when I think about choosing a church, too. There’s not a perfect one, so you choose one whose faults you can live with — whose faults and needs you are willing to take some responsibility for. To belong is to be willing to have your becoming bound up with another’s becoming, to participate in creating each other.

A visitor to a hermit once asked, “What do you actually do?”

And the hermit replied, “I live here.”

That’s a whole calling on its own.

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A personal note: we are on day fifteen without water and power in our home in Asheville, but we’ve had (and will continue to have) respite from a number of generous friends. Please speak up against conspiracy theories about the hurricane and its aftermath, if you’re hearing them among your friends and family. I’d be happy to point you to numerous local news sources that give a full picture of the immense amount of work being done by local forces, state-to-state assistance, federal workers, and aid organizations.

And finally, when I was looking in my photo album for that gourd picture, I was also reminded of this wonderful poem by Evie Shockley, also sort of about home in a good and damaged garden. (It mentions gourds.)

1. Thinking about what I want rarely feels delicious to me. Impossible, more like.

2. I’ll only add that property values are bound to be a little low in my neck of the woods right now, so buy and stay for at least three years and you’ll surely turn a profit if you then decide to leave. And the basement isn’t soooo mildewed from the storm that you couldn’t live in it for a while at first.

3. “Burned-out after years of doing development work around the world, William Powers spent a season in a 12-foot-by-12-foot cabin off the grid in North Carolina, as recounted in his award-winning memoir Twelve by Twelve. Could he live a similarly minimalist life in the heart of New York City? To find out, Powers and his wife jettisoned 80 percent of their stuff, left their 2,000-square-foot Queens townhouse, and moved into a 350-square-foot "micro-apartment" in Greenwich Village. Downshifting to a two-day workweek, Powers explores the viability of Slow Food and Slow Money, technology fasts and urban sanctuaries. Discovering a colorful cast of New Yorkers attempting to resist the culture of Total Work, Powers offers an inspiring exploration for anyone trying to make urban life more people- and planet-friendly.”

4. You don’t have to get the book. There are articles. Like https://time.com/7612/americas-mood-map-an-interactive-guide-to-the-united-states-of-attitude/ and https://www.truity.com/blog/united-states-personality-cities-and-states-have-distinct-personalities-data-reveals