wherever you are, keep going

some major life updates and gentle encouragement, in case you need it

I’ve been having dreams about the West Coast.

Our tiny apartment in the rain. Driving up the Mount Baker Highway. Camping on the Olympic Coast, steam curling, rainforest in the sun. The way an orca sounds when it breathes.

Snow up in the mountain pass while we hike, getting lost on Forest Service roads in our very own Twilight Zone. Feeling really aimless, really lost in general too— a big lull in freelancing work. Craving some sort of stability. The constant feeling that everyone around me has their life figured out and I’m just pretending, falling very badly behind.

That was just last fall. The fall before I was scraping by freelancing and working in a local coffee shop. The fall before that, a local sauna and freelancing. The fall before that? Working in a school during COVID, rapidly realizing I cannot do that, it’s not for me. And the fall before that I was living and working in Armenia as a Peace Corps volunteer, my future all bright and shiny. I was twenty-three and smart and well-written well-spoken and did very well in college and surely surely going places, didn’t you hear?

(Twenty-three is funny like that— there’s this huge gulf between the person you’re going to become and the person you are, but you’ve graduated and your whole life is sprawling before you and you’re filled with this feeling, or need rather, to be complete, right now, right this second. You’ve got the confidence of someone who hasn’t yet realized your twenties are going to be a struggle for you too, and you’re not an exception, and you won’t get your life figured out tomorrow, or even next year, and you’ve still got a whole lot to learn but you don’t know that yet. You are Dunning-Kruger personified. At least, I was.)

I’m reminded of the coffee shop barista Maddy fall in my dutch braid era, two autumns ago. One day I wore my Michigan State University Neuroscience department t-shirt to work.

“Did you get that at a thrift store?” A women point blank asked me while I made her a latte.

“Um,” I looked up and made eye contact with her. “No. I have a degree in Neuroscience.”

“Really?” She said, almost apologetic but really not quite. “My son is doing his degree in Neuroscience.”

We chatted a little and I smiled politely and made sure to talk to her long enough that she could feel better about the terribly rude thing she said to me— that a barista in a tourist town couldn’t possibly have a Neuroscience department shirt by participating in the Neuroscience department. And then she moved on with her day feeling fully atoned and I sat with it for a while. Falling behind, feeling like a waste of a very promising young woman. A waste of a good education.

I’ve been having dreams about the past five or so autumns since twenty-three, all the times I’ve felt like I was falling behind and failing and everything and not enough, and everyone around me could tell.

And I’m sharing all this with you now in case you feel like that right now— the autumn I was 24 I felt hopelessly lost and like my promising life plan was ripped to shreds by COVID and loosing my job and home and I would probably never recover. That the autumn I was 25 I was working three jobs in a tourist town and trying to make freelance writing work for the first time feeling derailed, and like I wasn’t good enough or smart enough to make it work at all. The autumn I was 26 I worked in a coffee shop while freelancing and it was enough but just barely, and I felt like I was pretending all the time. The autumn I was 27 I was floundering on the west coast, full-time freelancing but craving stability and a home and just not finding it. Last autumn there was an anxious lump in my throat all the time.

We, Andy and I, moved back from the West Coast on New Years Day. Back home in the Midwest, things have gotten so, so much better. Freelancing has been more than steady this year. I ran my first custom women’s trips and they were incredible, and I can’t wait to do that again. I freelanced and guided all summer and it was absolutely a blast and a whirlwind and exhausting and incredible all at once, and now it’s autumn and this September a lot has changed for me.

First, Andy and I got engaged! I for the most part keep my personal life off the internet, but here’s a little scrap of it— we got in engaged in August and have been together for four years now. We met sea kayak guiding, and yes it is as awesome as it sounds to have a partner who is into the same hyper niche sport that you are.

endlessly grateful for Andy, because I have always been more than enough to him. even when I felt like i was silly and floundering and nothing was working out, he still thought I was cool and smart and funny :)

oh hey, it’s my author page :)

Next, I took a full-time job with Paddling Magazine. I love freelancing, and I am so, so grateful for all of the opportunities I’ve had and all my time traveling and guiding. For a while now I’ve wanted something a little more stable and to have coworkers and work on creative projects as part of a team, and (perhaps obviously), Paddling Magazine couldn’t be a better fit.

I’m working as a digital content creator, which encompasses both editorial work and content writing as well as managing social media. A job better fit for me couldn’t possibly exist. Basically, I’ve got my absolute dream job now and I couldn’t be happier about it!

One of you guys on Instagram actually sent this job posting to me, and I tried to look back and figure out who it was to thank them because, well, I got the job and I am so stoked about it! I couldn’t find the original message but whoever that was THANK YOU I want to buy you a pizza.

Last, we signed a lease on a house in Northern Wisconsin and have moved in! We’ll be hanging out in this 1880s bad boy in the Northwoods for the foreseeable future. I am beyond stoked to have a home base and a home office, and especially one so close to my favorite place on earth, the Apostle Islands.

Basically, everything is going really, really well and I am extremely happy and satisfied in a way I truly didn’t realize was something I was capable of feeling. (I’ve always just thought I would feel a little insecure all the time you know?)

And I feel that way now, but for the last five years I have not felt that way at all. And I would not have this job, or this setup and sense of security if I hadn’t pushed through freelancing when it sucked and was hard. So this is for you—

if you’re 23, or 24 or 28 or whatever and things feel impossibly hard, and like you’ll never figure things out, you’ll never feel just… content— keep going. Next autumn is going to be better❤️

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Okay so those are obviously some big life changes! Here’s what you can expect around here:

• I’ll be scaling back to every other Sunday here— I’ll still shoot for weekly updates whenever possible, but the reality is that I probably won’t have time for a well thought-out, interesting newsletter every single week.

• I’ll be prioritizing Substack over social media; in the past I’ve spent a lot of time trying to create really genuine content for Instagram, replying to every comment, telling stories, answering every dm in full, ect. I probably just won’t have time for that anymore, and that’s okay! I’m going to focus more of my creative energy on long-form content here. I’ll still be active on social media, but probably not as engaged or reachable.

• I’ll be a little less reachable in general; if you have specific Midwest travel questions, check my blog! I’ll do my best to reply to comments here on Substack, but I already don’t see all my Instagram dms and likely will see even less now.

• Maybe I’ll become a morning runner? Probably that’s getting carried away.

Anyways, hope you’re having a beautiful weekend. I’m mostly unpacking and getting my life in order— not much adventure or fall color hiking or any of that, but that is more than okay for me. I’ve had a very full year already and am grateful for every second of it.

-Maddy