Finding My Way Back to Creativity

A few months ago, I wrote about Hurricane Helene (you can read it here) and the strange, heavy depression that followed. I was in survival mode, stripped down to the basics of functioning.

Since then, life hasn’t exactly smoothed out. I spent several months in a small, conservative town outside of Asheville, North Carolina, a place that eventually pushed me into a big cross-country move (my second in three years) back to Los Angeles. LA felt like a respite in many ways, but I still felt largely untethered. Loved ones and new friends kept asking, “So…are you going to move back to California permanently? Where do you want to live?” My idle time was often spent looping on those questions, wondering where my future would unfold.

After six months in LA, my girlfriend and I packed up her Subaru (named Ruth) and took three weeks to drive north to Montana. We mostly lived out of the car, rock climbing, visiting friends, soaking in hot springs, and scouting out potential places to set roots on t…