I quit my job and bought a van

Big changes invite new mantras.

I had to take responsibility for my happiness and I was not happy. I’d been working in an office since I left school in 2011, and although I was in one of the coolest cities I’ve ever known, I spent my daytimes convincing myself that my work mattered. I wasn’t sold, but everyone around me seemed to believe it. We were all lying. For all different reasons.

I quit to work on a personal project called A Place And All Its Creatures, kicking off this January. My partner and I are converting a van into a home (something neither of us know anything about) and will drive 9,000 miles around the United States studying how people shape and are shaped by their landscapes and communities.

Our working mantras:
“It’s not about being right. It’s about connecting”.
This one is for when you’re working with a partner and neither of you know anything about what you’re doing but feel very opinionated about which is the right way.
"This is going to be harder, take longer, and be more expensive than we plan”.
If we set this expectation going in, we won’t be so surprised every single time this happens!
"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.” Pema Chodron.

Alyssa Ackerman