Slowing down my life

Two and an half weeks ago, I moved from Washington DC to rural northeast Missouri. I traded in living in a row house with three great housemates in a busy city of over 600,000 residents for living in a mobile home alone on 80 acres five miles south of a town of 2,000 residents.

In many ways I knew it was time for a change in life. I had been living in DC for two and half years and I was ready for more adventures before I have to settle down and be focused on a career. Moving back to Missouri wasn't my first idea. I had other ideas, that included traveling or working on an organic farm, but those ideas never panned out, so I ended up moving to a farm that has been in the family since the Civil War.

Currently I am living in Scotland County near Memphis, Missouri. My dad's family has been in this area since the 1830s, but I grew up myself more than two hours south in Columbia and Jefferson City.

I do not have a clear idea of how long I will be here or what I will do while I am here. I have ideas of writing and helping with ongoing projects on Pine Ridge Reservation. The number one goal is to live a slower life. So far I have done little, except for joining the local 24 hour gym and obtaining a Scotland County Library card, so I figure that my plan for my time here does include losing some weight and reading a lot of books.

At first I thought I would not like living alone, since I have lived with people all my life, once I lived with 40 other people when I was living in a Co-Op in Ann Arbor. (I have lived with over 100 people in different housing situations throughout my life.) But I have realized that I LOVE living alone. I love having my own space to be in whenever I want and to be as loud or quiet as I want. Also my mother lives only a couple miles away and I have been spending a lot of time with her. She has a list of projects that she wants me to help with and I look forward to helping these projects, like building a root cellar and a chicken coop.

Already I am making friends in the area with two local intentional communities, Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village and Sandhill. Last night I attended a potluck at Dancing Rabbit and last week I helped Sandhill finished their Sorghum harvest.

Hopefully I will use this blog to write about my adventures living alone in rural Missouri, my thoughts about a range of topics from dating to Quakerism, and interesting and random tidbits that I find humorous. But I have the habit of starting blogs and never updating them.