If you thought that van life would free up your time, you thought wrong.

I have a vivid memory of standing in my pre-van life kitchen, crying over chopped onions, and saying to my partner, “When we move into the van, I’m gonna have so much time to do X, Y, and Z!”

I imagined the sound of my Slack notifications becoming singsong-y forest birds. I hoped that my stress would dissolve away with my escape from urban life. I expected that every day, I would look up from a deeply intuitive session of journaling and think, “Wow, it’s only 7 AM? I’ve got so much time!”

Pft, as if.

After spending a whole day doing who-knows-what near Powell River on the Sunshine Coast, we arrived late at our campsite yet again. This was a particularly sketchy spot — a skinny pullout on the side of a forest service road that drops into the abyss (of shrubs, but it was too dark to tell).

Along with our poor time management, I was regularly wondering, “Am I doing enough?” because my tangible output during van life had plummeted.

In an effort to objectively study my time use, but mostly to make myself feel better, I tracked every minute of every day for a week. Let the bean counting begin.

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Explore. My 2021 Word of the Year.

In the year of lockdowns, social distancing, Zoom dates…I landed on this word, of all words, to guide my purpose for the year. To me, the word explore embodied giving myself permission to fail, leaning into resistance, and ultimately, following my heart to fully live out my values and commitments.

Despite the juxtaposition that was my word and the world, I had plenty of safe adventuring. I explored in the true sense of the word, beginning van life, traveling from Toronto to Vancouver Island, then down south into the Californian desert.

Despite the fear that others would judge me as being foolish, I shared my journey publicly and as authentically as possible (it’s hard to be on camera). I explored different mediums — most resilience-building of them all was YouTube.

Despite the fear of failure, I quit my job to focus on my coaching business. I explored various avenues for coaching, from business coaching, to embodiment coaching, to directing a life skills masterminds for students in BETA Camp. (This was a dream come true. When I was 9 years old, I drew my future self: a teacher with long, blonde curly hair.)

Through it all, I gave myself permission to just try. Each moment opened me up more and more, like a water lily upon seeing the sun every day. Each moment shifted my perspectives, helped me feel deeply, and taught me life lessons.

Of these lessons, I’m offering you my top three learnings. These learnings kicked me in the gut, left me frozen momentarily in time, and as I melted back into reality, I felt a completely new symbiosis with the questions, “Who am I? Why am I here?”

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