Two years ago today, I moved to the Napa Valley. Of all the strange leaps I\u2019ve made in my life, this was strangest. At the time, I was poised to go to Africa in Peace Corps; two years earlier, I\u2019d found my calling in relief work; one year earlier I\u2019d spent the summer in the wilds of the American West on a 3-month trek through public lands as the team medic; two months earlier I\u2019d quit my job of three years working at one of New York\u2019s best restaurants. I moved out here as a wanna-be writer, wanna-be EMT, wanna-be wine geek, wanna-be Peace Corps volunteer, wanna-be disaster relief worker. I say wanna-be on all counts because I was no one thing fully. Two years later, I am none of these fully, all of them partly, just like when I came, except now I am a hundred more things than I never would have been had I not moved here. (A hundred things, good and bad, or neither, just different.) <\/p>\n
My work here is some of the most exciting of my life, and exciting even more because of where it will take me. And I am thankful for so much- a laundry list of help, guidance, support, love, and challenges. Two years ago yesterday, as I slept my last night in my brownstone studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York, as I looked around at the bare walls and the two packed bags, I was terrified about the choice I\u2019d made but I leapt, praying to all ye gods that a net would appear. <\/p>\n
And so it did. It\u2019s Sunday afternoon, Napa Valley fall, I have stock simmering on the stove and tomatoes from my garden waiting to become sauce. I\u2019ve spent a few hours on a grant proposal, a few more hours on a major fundraising drive, I\u2019m looking forward to a date with a puzzle, and I\u2019m still in my pajamas. I was in the city last night with six dear friends, celebrating a birthday. I could say I\u2019ve built a life here, but what\u2019s really happened is I\u2019ve rebuilt myself here. I am still discontented and frustrated and nuts and flawed and whatever, but I\u2019m a hundred times more aware of the possibilities in my life, and next time I leap, it is going to be towards something, not away from something. And my, oh, my, am I excited for that leap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two years ago today, I moved to the Napa Valley. Of all the strange leaps I\u2019ve made in my life, this was strangest. At the time, I was poised to go to Africa in Peace Corps; two years earlier, I\u2019d found my calling in relief work; one year earlier I\u2019d spent the summer in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlwms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}