News from Jules | 05.07.2024 | Moving On: Part 2

We’re trusting it for a while.

When I put nearly everything into storage in October 2021 I figured it was temporary, a few months perhaps. I just needed some time for my reality to align with my vision. The one that had been slowly formulating at the back of my imagination and inching its way forward over the past decade: A quiet, inspiring home nestled in the beauty of nature near a quaint, small town.

Just as the sunset looks so close on the horizon when it’s actually miles away, I didn’t realize then that I had a lot more letting go to do in order to move on and fulfill this vision: my family, my close friends, my childhood, my hometown, almost all of my former dreams. That I still have a lot more letting go to do.

After the initial shock of losing my corporate startup job in July 2021, I realized I was once again at a crossroads. Try to get a new six-figure job in the two months before my one-year lease renewed or take the opportunity to explore more. Some friends graciously offered long-term housesitting gigs in Portland from October 2021 through April 2022 so I let the lease expire and put everything in storage as a stepping stone toward the vision.

Surely by then, I’d know where I was landing.

That May I did land in a quiet, inspiring cabin nestled in the beauty of the Hudson Valley woods near the quaint, small town of Rhinebeck, N.Y. but it was only for the retreat season. My belongings stayed in storage for another eight months while I traveled cross-country and kept an eye out for my future home in the quaint, small towns I passed through. Surely by the time I returned to Oregon, I’d know where I was landing.

Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s came and went in Portland before I finally had a place to go—housesitting in quiet, inspiring homes nestled in the beauty of Black Butte Ranch near the quaint, small town of Sisters, Ore. But after five months in Central Oregon, I still hadn’t landed in a place of my own, so that July 2022, I once again set off to explore other quaint, small towns throughout the West. On the way back, I applied to ski resort jobs in two of my favorite towns so far: Bend, Ore. and Taos, N.M. Surely by the time I returned to Oregon for my best friend’s wedding in October, I’d know where I was landing.

A couple of weeks later in early November, while visiting Portland for my annual exam, I stopped by my dear friend’s letterpress shop to pick up my potted plants. I barely recognized them. Way bigger and greener, they had flourished while living in the light-filled studio surrounded by beautiful greeting cards and antique printing presses for over two years while I traveled. Had it really been that long?

For a moment, I questioned whether I should move my plants yet or leave them where they seemed to be quite happy. After all, everything else was staying in storage for another winter. I didn’t hear back from Taos Ski Valley, but I was hired seasonally at REI Bend and Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort, which offered temporary employee housing. Hopefully, I tucked all of my plants into the backseat of my car, just like that vision tucked in the back of my heart, and headed back to Bend.

I still didn’t know where I’d land, nonetheless put down roots, but I knew I needed to stay put for the winter, and hopefully beyond.

This is Rule #1.

Find a place you trust and try trusting it for a while.

Sister Corita Kent and her students wrote the Immaculate Heart College Art Department 10 Rules in the 1960s when she was radically stretching cultural norms through avant-garde art filled with social activism. The rules apply to life just as much as they apply to making art.

While poking around quaint, small-town bookstores and coffee shops during my travels, I discovered New Rules Next Week, a book of essays about the 10 Rules published in 2023. It immediately jumped off the shelf at me, just like when I first saw the rules many years ago on Instagram. An artist and Portland State University professor I follow posted about her ritual of sharing and expanding on the Rules—new rules next week—with her art students at the beginning of each school year.

When I first discovered an exhibit of Corita’s print art tucked away in the basement of the Portland Art Museum many, many years ago, I loved the stark yet playful, blunt but poetic combination of words, shapes, and handwritten text, especially her minimalist prints from the 1970s. Her distinctive style morphed and evolved throughout her decades-long creative career, especially by sticking with her favorite medium of screenprinting.

Corita found a place she trusted and tried trusting it for a while.

As an artist—even as a human—our interests change all the time led by our curiosity, our wonder, our awe. Once we get fascinated by something, even obsessed, we want to experience all of it, deeply, and we don’t stop until we’re satiated.

And then, when we are, we often move on. Not because we don’t love it anymore, but because we’re done. It’s time to let go.

But, first, we must stay put for a while. This curiosity, this wonder, this awe finds us everywhere, so we savor and experiment a lot. Thus, Rule #1 directs us to stop looking and start noticing. Find a place you trust—a medium, a subject, a style, an instrument, a genre, a routine, and yes, literally a studio, a shop, a desk, or a coffee shop—and try trusting it for a while.

There’s trust because it feels natural, honest, strong, and reliable. It’s trustworthy. Not necessarily easy or comfortable, which is part of what makes it interesting.

For me in recent years that’s been:

• Writing personal stories about the universal life lessons I’m learning published in newsletters to you every week,

• Geometric, minimalistic landscape drawings using pen and ink, specifically a black Uniball Vision Rollerball pen, in a small sketchbook while I’m adventuring in nature,

• And, training, researching, planning, and attempting to climb mountains with teammates in the snowy Cascade mountain range.

“But with the phrase ‘for a while,’ Corita reminds us that nothing is permanent, that neither this quest nor this attention ever remains static,” wrote Natacha Ramsay-Levi, fashion designer and former creative director of Chloé, in her essay about Rule #1 in New Rules Next Week: Corita Kent’s Legacy through the Eyes of Twenty Artists and Writers.

The quest and our attention are dynamic, just like life. Everchanging based on exploring and experimenting, by new opportunities and deadends, by letting go and holding on.

Rule #1 applies to my life as much as my art right now.

Back in November, when I started searching for housing in Bend I drove around town and noticed where I felt at home. I outlined my favorite neighborhoods on a map. All winter I looked at dozens of long-term housing options. Luckily, they were all dead ends. Between the mild El Ninõ winter that delayed ski season, storms that canceled shifts, exposure to colds and the flu at the frontline, the typical retail slowdown in the new year, an overall sluggish outdoor recreation industry, and then lost wages from my ski accident on March 8, I couldn’t actually afford a lease yet.

But, I kept trusting.

Just a few weeks before my Mt. Bachelor employee housing expired on April 30, I discovered a duplex right on the edge of my favorite area. I instantly felt good about the landlord, the sparse and clean communal space, the spacious bike room for storage, the light-filled northeastern bedroom, and the flexible month-to-month lease. Even though I didn’t meet the three professional guys in their 30’s already living there until I moved in, I leaned into the chain of trust. If the landlord picked me, then he must have picked other good people too.

It’s not the quiet, inspiring home of my own nestled in the beauty of nature near a quaint, small town that I’ve imagined. But it’s getting closer.

See photos of my new spot in Bend on Instagram.

I still don’t know where I’ll land, but I know I need to stay put while I continue right-sizing my life and aligning my vision to fit my reality.

My plants and I have been back in Bend for six months, but only at the duplex for three weeks. A few days ago, I noticed my 20-year-old Peace Lily leaves drooping far down the sides of her tall, black pot instead of their usual perkiness—her gracious way of showing a desperate need for my attention—and I realized that in the hustle of the big move, working, teaching workshops at REI, and doing physical therapy, I couldn’t actually remember the last time I watered the plants. Uh oh.

Upon closer inspection of my other plants, I noticed one of the succulents’ roots sticking alarmingly out of the soil. When I took her home from a work event and transplanted her into a prettier pot back in spring 2020, there was just one small bud. Now, five buds were bursting from the pot, including one long trunk with multiple heads that actually fell out of the pot and into my hand.

Hmmm, perhaps my plants were as exhausted by all the moving as I was.

After unsuccessfully trying to shove the trunk back into the totally saturated soil, I tucked all of the buds into the Peace Lily’s drier soil bed for transport for an emergency room visit to Somewhere That’s Green, the luscious local indoor plant shop that I discovered when I was living at the Campfire hotel.

The owner gently poked through my crate full of healthy but mismatched potted plants that dearly needed his tender loving care as he kindly informed me that repotting days were by appointment but offered to help me anyhow.

As he pulled them out one after another, he gasped in awe and fascination, diagnosing wrong pot, wrong soil, old soil, overwatered and/or overcrowded, and yet, somehow all healthy and thriving.

Especially the 20-year-old Peace Lily from my Mom’s funeral. Just look how strong these roots are, the owner exclaimed.

As he worked, the plant shop owner gave me detailed instructions on how to care for all of my plants with the seasons. “We’re in the growing season,” he said. “Be sure to water them weekly right now so they have enough energy for all the new growth.”

I could relate.

He recentered the Peace Lily spaciously in a bed of fresh soil, repotted one overgrown succulent into three pots, placed the other lanky one in a pot twice as deep, and planted two new baby succulents into the tiny pots I brought, for now.

With a lot of help, we’ve both transplanted into better conditions—we’ve moved to another place or situation, including some effort or upheaval.

We’re trusting it for a while.

May you grow where you’re planted this week.

Love,

Jules