Ayla and I in one of our favorite coastal camp sites. I love waking up here and taking Ayla to the beach. It’s a nice place close enough to the shop and is a place I love spending my time. It’s also pretty affordable to be here often since I’m still waiting to get into a more permanent shop/living situation.
Hey, from Tillamook, Oregon - Yes, where they make the cheese, and where the cows who make the cheese happen live. It’s a little just-off-the-coast town of Oregon. I landed here in a mix of wanting to move to Oregon, a lack of proper planning on my part, covid, finding an affordable shop space in a pinch, and knowing I’m jumping along some stepping stones to bigger goals.
Over the past 2 years I’ve built out five vans, traveled for a summer as the photographer and videographer for a YouTube show, moved with my friends to Joshua tree for a winter, moved to Oregon, and most recently took the winter off of building vans to visit family, snowboard, and work with some companies from the road.
Among the work of the past 2 years there was a relational breakup to kick off covid. I went through some high highs and low lows, have gotten fired, officiated a few weddings, made some people really happy and others not happy, and learned to see myself in a new way in the process of it all. I dove into therapy a bit more than I ever have, building trust and setting realistic goals with my personal and professional life. Learned ways I wasn’t wise, didn’t see the world for what it actually was, and found out I was dealing with moments in the present based off of poignant experiences from the past. I think we’re all going have to do some similar work and am happy I, albeit slowly and probably late in the game, was able to make some growth here.
Ayla is doing great. As long as she gets her exercise she thrives whether it’s on the road or in the shop. She mainly just wants some love, play, affection, and time running on the beach, a mountain trail, or in the desert.
I’m working on finding new clients for van builds and photography as well as thinking of where I want my company to go. A few goals I have are…
Build in Oregon through the summer and move my shops location in the fall
Shoot and officiate a few weddings
Create a journaling program with guided writing prompts and the journals I already make
Explore the idea of merging my van building company with a program serving foster/group home/homeless populations to give them a well paying job with clear paths to scholarship in the trades or college, depending on what work they enjoy learning the most in the build process. Ultimately, I would love this program to sustain without me.
Buy a home
Date more, but slowly and intentionally
Publish my books
Slowly shift my life to revolve more around writing
Ayla modeling our most recent van build which is also my current home.
The social aspect of living in a place like Tillamook has been hard. I haven’t found the creative community I’ve hoped for and in general I’ve found Oregon to be a hard place to build community. This is a sample study of one (me) but groups and communities here seem to be insular and depend on proximity, which I understand, but isn’t exactly helping to be in Tillamook which is a ways from anywhere. But I have managed to find two friends who I met on Instagram who have been really life giving. I can be really extroverted or introverted, so I cope alright either way, but it has been nice to see people other than the ones who fill up my gas every couple weeks - which by law a gas station attendant has to do in Oregon and I will forever find weird.
Yesterday I built a cabinet for a van and it was so nice to get in the flow state of building. I’m not much one for Yoga or Meditation, but I think I get the same thing while building. The shop is also cleaned up and becoming a place I love to spend time… especially once the temps start staying above 50 degrees as the shop is not heated.
Overall, I’m happy. Life has been pretty good. I have plenty I’m interested in and tangible ways to work to progress those things. I’m really thankful for this, for a life that pays off when I work at it, because for a long time I didn’t see much payoff. In hindsight I understand the treading water, staying alive, being in debt and working as hard as I could to not go deeper into a mental, financial, physical, and emotional hole was the hardest work I’ll ever have to do. What didn’t feel like progress was thousands of miles of movement in the direction I wanted to go. I’m still not where I want to be yet, but I see now I was merely blinded by a storm during that time. Now, I can see a bit more, work is good, the storm is gone and I’m finding hard work can do more than keep you from dying, and most importantly I’m seeing the benefits of all the effort, of not giving up all the times where it felt like I should just throw in the towel. I’m where I saw a lot of my friends were in my twenties when they were getting to build their businesses and lives. Something I did at the same time but my bandwidth for growth was lower with everything being so muddled with navigating cancer, insurance, and bills. I’m still learning to not have regret over not having been able to “do more” during those times, but I guess I’m seeing I actually did a lot of laying the groundwork in a time where my world was getting rocked. And I’m pretty proud of that. Hopefully if you’re going through something hard too, a time where it feels like your effort doesn’t take you anywhere, you’ll see every ounce of energy you poured into your life mattered. Even if the effort didn’t manifest itself into progress in the moment, I promise it will make progress in the long term, and the effort from the hard times will make the effort and reward in the good times seem so easy. You earned it every time back then when you didn’t give up. So I guess I’m learning some confidence and more about effort through the lens of business and personal wellbeing.
I’m sure I’ll be a forever learner and I don’t mean to make it seem like all this was necessary, but I think reframing what I know now vs what I used to know is a good practice in putting things in perspective both for myself and hopefully for others too.
Thanks for reading the update. More to come.
Cheers