In 2018, a teacher of mine told me about a book called The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse by Dale Pendell. Pendell was a poet, ethnobotanist, and novelist, who died in early 2018, just months before I heard about his book.

I spent most of 2017 and 2018 in isolation. After getting divorced in late 2016, I moved into a cabin at the top of a windy road in Topanga Canyon, California, in hopes of starting a new life. This new life did eventually arrive, but not as quickly as I would have liked. First, the universe insisted I confront and transmute everything that had led me so far off my path. This took some time.

While I scoured the depths of my subconscious, confronting years of self-delusion and grief, the world around me seemed to be doing the same.

Trump’s election had only been the beginning. From the Women’s March and #Metoo, to the white supremacist rally in Virginia, Kaepernick’s taking a knee, raging wildfires (one of which forced me out of Topanga for nine days), devastating hurricanes, and the deadliest mass shooting in US history, the world seemed to be forcing us to confront everything we’d hoped to avoid.

From the looks of my podcast episodes and Substack posts over the past six months, it would be easy to assume that not much has been happening, and/or that I’ve become incredibly lazy. In reality, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. My life has actually been busier than ever, it’s just that very little of it has made it online.

Living in Crestone full-time for the past year, my day-to-day life has changed in ways I hadn’t fully anticipated. One major shift is that for the first time in seven years, instead of writing and podcasting about the life I desired, I am now actually living it.

Inevitably, my interest in coming online to share big ideas about “saving the world” has taken a back seat to volunteering at local gardens, helping to organize community events, and writing for the local paper.

A note from my 2017 journal reads, “Start as local as possible, and go from there. The ripple starts at the center and radiates out.” I always wanted to believe this was true, but up until recently, I had my doubts. Deep down I still assumed that “saving the world” had to be more complex, more flashy, more radical. For a long time I resented people who moved to the middle of nowhere in order to live an alternative life; People who seemed disconnected from meaningful interaction with the rest of the world.

What about global activism? What about speaking out against worldwide inequality? What about influencing and inspiring others to fight back and resist the status quo?

Without broad-based recognition, could I really claim to be making a difference? Without “saving the world,” did I really deserve to live a happy, simple, and pleasure-filled life?