Month: March 2018

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PCT Day 3 – A Nero at Mount Laguna

Cibbets Flat CG (mile 32 + 1mi off trail road walk) to Mount Laguna (mile 41)

When I make my way out of the tent I discover that our camp mates Sparky and Ghost Hiker – two hikers who met on the AT last year and are tackling the PCT this year – are gone. With our early start date and intentionally leisurely schedule this doesn’t alarm me. What does however is the tightness in my right foot. I had hoped I’d get at least a week before hiker hobble set in. It’s come early but luckily not severely.

It’s an hour and a half later when we finally make it out of camp. The morning is spent climbing along the sides of baking desert hills until suddenly we’re deposited into a fragrant pine forest. What was once a hard packed dirt track is now a cushioned ribbon leading us through the forest. Tall pines provide the first shade we’ve felt since leaving the border.

When we arrive at Mount Laguna we find a dozen or more thru hikers crowding the tables in the small cafe. Our fellow early starters.

Since before the start of the trail people with similar start days to ours have been adamant about keeping their days short. Staying healthy early on, not stressing; a casual pace is the name of the game. But already the pull of Canada is drawing people out. As I watch folks from lunch stream up the road and away from the campsite where we’ll be spending the night I feel like I’m missing out. Though unspoken, the pressure to hike bigger miles is there. Burbling under the surface is a tension that is not quite competitive, but close.

This sort of hiking is a balancing act between not getting injured on the one hand, and moving fast enough to complete the trail in the available five month weather window. So early on it’s impossible to tell if you’re perfectly balanced, or if you’ve already starting to slip to one side.

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PCT Day 1 – What Are we Even Doing?

Campo/Mexico border (mile 0) to Hauser Creek (mile 15)

We wake early in the dark, movement all around as sleepy anxious hikers mill about. Drinking coffee. Laughing briskly. Sunscreen on. Bags on the porch. Then everybody is out of the house, the cars are loaded and we’re speeding east towards the lightening sky in a beige minivan with bottomed out suspension.

32 degrees today, there is frost on the corrugated rusted metal that makes up the border wall which runs to the horizon both east and west. Everybody climbs out of the cars and I wonder if everybody else worries if their bags are too big, if they have packed too much food or too little water. But what is there to be done? Nothing. So I sling my bag on my back and walk the small hill to the start of the trail. The monument at the southern terminus is a collection of concrete pillars and though it signifies so much it is barely memorable in appearance. After dozens of sets of pictures that we both are and are not in another car load of hikers arrives and we begin to shuffle on our way.

As I hike into the sunrise again and again I think we’re here, we’re doing it, is this it? is this real? how did we manage any of this? It must be, but my god, how incredible.

Our day is filled with the desert scrub land that is so ubiquitous in these areas, giant piles of boulders strewn in haphazard formations dot the hills, shot through with the faded green chaparral, yucca, and at lower elevations oak, all folded upon each other, layer by layer like so many rumpled blankets.

As we hike I think of our fellow hikers. Who are these other people out here on this strange vacation with us? Are these people I’ll call my friends later, and who of them do I like, and can I even tell? I wonder who will be the first person to drop out. I imagine everybody who sets out from the southern terminus believes that they’ll finish. But this idea clashes with the idea that less than half do. I guess we’ll see.

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PCT Day 2 – Fantastic, Fantastic, Fantastic.

** Hey Folks! A little delayed on this one. I wrote this post on trail, but then somehow forgot to publish it.

Hauser Creek (mile 15) to Cibbets Flat CG (mile 32 + 1mi off trail road walk)

It’s 3pm when we start the climb out of Boulder Oaks Campground; we’re 10 miles into our second day on the trail and already we’ve had a leisurely brunch at Lake Morena and then whiled away a few hours more at Boulder Oaks Campground stretching and chatting with our fellow hikers. The afternoon is cooling and we decide to press on a few more miles.

The climb is gradual and tidy in the special way of the PCT, shepherding us higher along the red sand path, fenced in by the chaparral and below a tumbling stream appears from nowhere, cascading down the valley in slides and pools, rushing channels that plunge into gem colored tubs and then out of sight to who knows where. My legs feel strong and capable, making efficient work of the ascent. There is a light breeze that offsets the blazing sun shining down from the perfect blue sky and everything is fantastic. Every last detail is perfectly rendered in brilliant Technicolor.

I look. I gape at my surroundings. I try and take it all in. How good I feel, Keith cruising up the hill ahead of me, the sun, the rocks, this wonderful trail that so many people worked to make a reality just so a bunch of weirdos could try and walk from Mexico to Canada each year. What could we have possibly done to deserve all this?

I try to make the moment part of me. I want to consume this experience, let it fill me up until there is nothing left but lightness and a breeze on my arms. I want to hold onto this feeling forever even though I know I never could. But I try, I try so hard.

These perfect Instagram moments are the ones that draw people to thru hiking initially, and keep them coming back. But they are not the only moments or even the majority of the experience. There will be hours of difficulty ahead of us, cold nights and blisters and painful joints and arguments and boredom and frustration so profound as to make you scream your lungs out into the silent hills.

So as I climb I try my best to hold onto this moment, this fantastic gift of a day, and I endeavor to tuck this joy deep down inside me like a little stone that I can hold onto when the hard times come. I will rub my little stone from this wonderful day and remember why I’m out here.

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PCT Day 0 – The Kindness of Strangers

We step off the train in San Diego and everything is the same as when we left southern California one week ago, and yet it’s totally different feeling too. But perhaps it’s just that we feel different now, like stepping into a new life. Slowly, by degrees and leaps the reality of what we’re doing sinks in. A dawning that’s lasted days and weeks.

Before long we’re picked up by none other than Frodo herself – one half of the famous trail angel couple Scout and Frodo. She is a petite stoic woman. By the time we swing by the airport there are five soon to be PCT hikers riding along in a minivan trying to make small talk as we wind into the hills above San Diego.

At the house people are milling about, there is a grocery store run for snacks, and people drift from room to room, uncertainty abounds. Everything is starting but not quite yet.

Over dinner Scout gently rambles to and fro, covering topics such as house rules, trail angle etiquette, LNT, and the history of the PCT itself while 25 thru hiking hopefuls eat tacos in rapt silence. 66 years old with an exuberant ease, childlike and joyful Scout is a delight to listen to, while Frodo plays the straight man, chiming in with small corrections and easing the topic back on track whenever her husband drifts too far afield. What people, what kindness, who could possibly ask for more than these remarkable folks are giving us. I could listen to them talk forever and a day, but soon dinner, along with the announcements, are over and a short time later people drift off to bed.

Tomorrow it all starts for real. Though what that will truly mean in the minutes and details of a thru hike remain a mystery, at least one last night.

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Goodbye, Los Angeles

Goodbye, Los Angeles. What a ride it has been.

I was 21 when I arrived in this city. An ugly, sprawling mess of a city hidden under a blanket of smog, rimmed by barely visible mountains and populated with some of the most careless drivers I have ever seen. I remember the first drive across the city, from east to west, cars swirling around me, concrete flashing below me, the sun blazing down from on high. I was overwhelmed and wanted to love it, but I couldn’t, I never did, and I still can’t. The novelty of palm trees and year-round sun wore away quickly under the constant strain of living in the overpriced heart of the film industry. Within a year of arriving I was looking for a way out, though it would take me another seven years before I could fully conjure my escape.

I came to Los Angeles with dreams, as so many do, of life in the entertainment industry. Weekends spent beneath towering palm trees, and days spent crafting the future of cinema. I was eager and sure of myself, and also deeply insecure and afraid that my dreams would all come to naught, that I’d be seen as the creative fraud that I feared I was. That I still fear that I am. But I had dreams, and so I leapt into the unknown. Knowing that I could swim for my life if I must, but hoping it wouldn’t come to that. I wanted to find success here, praise, and perhaps even community. In the end I found all of these and none of these, for life is not the highway that I believed it to be, but rather a reckless flailing about, a grasping. Weather purely through fault of my own, bad luck, or changing tides I could never hold on hard enough to make myself happy here.

First, I was a film student, eager to please and prove myself. Then, an underpaid and often unpaid set lackey, taking orders from my peers who sought to impress the famous among us. As though the way to the top were paved in stepped on toes and screamed orders. Perhaps they knew better than I, as many of those same peers are measurably more successful than myself. Next, I became an advertising industry wanna be, and though my career there ended in what can best be described as burnout and knockout, I was deeply happy for a time. So many days my work felt like creative summer camp and I stayed longer than I should have. Under the mentorship of a workaholic and acutely inspiring boss I grew and learned and in a way found my voice. Eventually, I learned that hard work and early mornings don’t pay the bills, that drive doesn’t make you valuable enough to withstand budget cuts, and my agency decided they could do without me. The leaving broke my heart, but also taught me so much. I’m ending my time here as a corporate shill, bored on a daily basis, uninspired and overpaid, scraping together creative projects on the side to keep myself stimulated. And yet. And yet! I cannot define my time in Los Angeles purely on the basis of a lackluster career. If my graceless forced departure from the advertising industry taught me one thing, it is that we are so much more than our job titles.

What I never dreamed of is the friends I would make, and the love I would find. To those I met in college, I want to say thank you. Thank you for taking me in, giving me my first home here, allowing me to express myself and grow creatively. Thank you for the early hours and the late nights, the drunken discussions and the sober editorial sessions. I have so many happy memories from the two years we spent together, and if I regret anything it is that I didn’t hold tighter to your hands as we stepped out into the wider world. And to my professional friends, I owe you for helping me become who I am today both personally and professionally. Our relationships were occasionally adversarial, but more often they were inspirational, educational, and illuminating. You showed me that I have a voice and ideas that are worth expressing. You taught me how to defend an idea and, more importantly, when to concede and compromise for the sake of the work. And finally, you taught me not to define myself by my career, that desire doesn’t equate gain. It is because of you that I learned failure is not the worst thing that can happen to a person, not as much as clinging to something you don’t fully believe in. Though, I am not sure you ever planned to teach me that last lesson.

Interspersed between my work friends and my college friends, are my true friends, those of you whom I hope I will never lose. I owe you a great deal more than I can express. You know who you are, and you should know that I love you. Thank you.

When I think back on my time in Los Angeles, I’m struck by how nothing turned out how I planned. The comedy of my hubris is laughable now, as though any five year plan could have anticipated the rollercoaster of experiences that I’ve had the pleasure to live through in my nearly eight years here. My time in this city has been full of firsts and for that I will always be grateful.  Beyond that, the barely controlled chaos of living in such a massive city has mellowed me in some ways, and radicalized me in others. I am no more the person I was when I arrived here, than the person my 21 year old self dreamed I would become. I’ve let go of so many of the things that I thought I wanted, and in doing so have set the basis for the person I hope I can become one day.

My time in Los Angeles has taught me that the best thing you can do for yourself is to believe in something. Anything. Believe in your convictions, and your knowledge of what is right. Believe in your partners and your friends, and let them surprise you. Believe that we can change the world, that things are getting better and that we are the building blocks that the future will stand on. Believe in yourself, your value, your worth, even when no one else does. And believe in your right to speak up for what is right, walk away from what is no longer serving you and seek out the answer to that calling deep inside you. Believe in that bone deep ache that is calling you towards something bigger and better.

Today Keith and I are leaving Los Angeles, onto our next adventure, onto the future of our lives together. So little in our future is certain and I’m eager for all the surprises that are in store for us. When I arrived in Los Angeles I never believed that it would bring this kind, generous, funny, caring man into my life. And while I cannot say I have loved my time here, I love him and if it took eight confusing years to get to this point, than it will have been worth it.

Goodbye, Los Angeles. I can’t say I’ll miss you, but I can say that I’m glad of our time together.

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Anticipation

In April of 2016 I decided I was going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Canada to Mexico. The first person I told about this plan was my boyfriend, Keith. We were in our apartment, the two rooms with the yellow walls and the apple tree in the lawn. I let him know that in 2018 I’d be leaving Los Angeles, my job, and our home together. That I’d be chasing this dream that had reached up and grabbed me; a dream I couldn’t shake loose. I didn’t ask him for permission, nor did I exactly invite him to come along with me, I simply stated my intentions and hoped for the best. It was a risk. It continues to be a risk. And I was comfortable in the idea that I could very likely be tackling this adventure alone. Later, to my surprise and delight, Keith told me he wanted to come along on my wild dream, that this was something he wanted us to do together. From that moment on it was our dream.  We had an audacious goal that felt deeply special, like the whole PCT was just for us. Our lives in Los Angeles now operated against a ticking clock – one that would take nearly two years to wind down.

Humans, it would seem, are obsessed with big improbable dreams, the Olympics are certainly proof of that. But what I never reconciled about big dreams, is that they operate on long timelines, years where things could go wrong, months and days where plans can change and fantasies can fall apart. These long timelines are ripe with potential pitfalls, but also quiet moments where one’s mind drifts off to what could be. What it would feel like to stand at the start of an epic adventure, what the daily miscellanea will feel like, and the imagined euphoria of completion. It’s like being a kid before Christmas. Yet, with the perspective of age I’ve come to realize that the anticipation might just be the best part, and it also might be the most damaging part too. Because life attempts to teach us that what we want and what we get are often different, what we hope will be true can mar the experience of what is. Anticipation can loom so large and magnificent that the real experience could never live up to the effortlessly beautiful film reel that plays in our minds. Even the knowledge of inevitable pain and challenge is muted until it is nothing more than a dull ache echoing from a far away place.

The time for us to depart on our hike is rapidly approaching. The little apartment with the yellow walls has been stripped of everything that once made it ours and the anticipation of what is to come fills my waking mind. I’ve stopped living in the present and started living in a distant fictional reality where the world is at once more wonderful and extreme and dangerous. A world, where unbidden to reality, my rapidly spiraling imagination can picture a thousand outcomes replete with detailed fictional characters. Day dreams where I can swap out details and scenarios, replay them until they’re right or wrong or poignant enough to feel almost real. In some, I’m witty and kind, the best version of myself, and thru hiking is an effortless dream scape. In some I’m argumentative and petty or worse, I balk and retreat where I would rather I stand up for what I believe, and I’m ashamed and mad at this future fictional self. In the present however, I know that I am all of these things, which is what makes these anticipatory day dreams so captivating, they’re all based on some granule of truth. Just because something feels real, doesn’t make it real, or even possible, and I fear that my daydreams will cloud my reality to the point where the only outcome is disappointment.

The PCT is one thing – a finite trail,  defined by milage and markers, but it is also a million things – daily struggles and pain and joy and apathy and who knows what else. I’m worried that I’ll meet people on the trail who are as toxic and problematic as they appear on the PCT Facebook page, where casual derision and sexism are par for the course. I’m afraid that when I meet these people I’ll let their behavior wash past me, and I will disengage, using my privilege to retreat to a safe space. At the same time I’m worried that I will stand by my convictions and as a result I will be friendless all the way to Canada, ostracized and mocked and threatened.

I’m also afraid, so afraid, that some unforeseen accident will keep me from finishing the trail. That two years of planning and dreaming and hoping will all be for nothing. I’m afraid that my very body which has carried me through 29 years of not terribly kind treatment will simply fail to tote my brain all the way to Canada. Or perhaps that my tendons will all swell and freeze into place and I will have to admit that hiking, this thing that feels like part of me, is not meant for me. That I won’t be strong or adaptable enough to persevere and that I’ll have to live with the knowledge of that. I’m worried that Keith will hate the trail and I’ll have to carry on alone, or worse, that we’ll fall away from each other and the four years we’ve spent building a life together will cease to matter. That I’ll finish the trail alone, in a new city without a job or an apartment or friends.  

In writing this, I’m attempting to concur another fear – around the very real possibility of public failure. Of stating my plans for this grand adventure, writing about my hike on this blog and then falling short, the embarrassment of having to explain that I failed. There are perfectionist tendencies which roil inside me, and the few things in my life that I’m very proud of are those which were nearly impossible upon the outset. With a finishing rate of around 30%, the PCT certainly falls into the category of things I’m statistically likely to fail at, and while that is scary, it is also what draws me to this challenge.

Fear, however, is not my only companion on my approach to the PCT, though at times it is certainly the loudest. There is an ache that resonates inside me, that calls me towards the mountains, and I yearn for the opportunity to explore that, to deepen my connection to old places I love and new places I’ve yet to be acquainted with. I’m looking forward to the muscle pain of effort, the euphoria of endorphins rushing between my ears. I want to meet wonderful people and share this experience with them. I want to take on the world with this man who feels like home, and I want us to grow together and become better both individually and apart. The anticipation of cold mornings, boring snacks, suffocating laughter, and  tear inducing frustration, I’ve anticipated it all, I want it all. But I also know, that what I can imagine is not all there is.

How can you possibly anticipate a future about which you know almost nothing? So much of the map, both literal and emotional, is blank. There are vast stretches of this trail which are totally foreign to me, there are people I have never imagined meeting, and yet I will. Experiences I won’t expect to have, and yet I will. There is fear in the unknown, but also the opportunity for discovery, and when I try and think of all the eventualities that lay beyond the horizon I’m awed at the immensity of it. I cannot help but laugh at my audacity, for thinking I could plan out this trip, anticipate everything that could be. The honest truth is that I have about as much knowledge of the next nine months of my life as I do of 1920’s refrigerator maintenance.

Amongst all the things I have tried to anticipate, there is the one thing I’ve tried to push completely from my mind: what would my future look like if everything stayed the same. There is fear in the unknown, yes, but for me there is a much greater fear of stagnation and dull uniformity. What if in my quest for challenge and newness I find nothing so much as the same person I am now? What if nothing changes and I’m spat out on the far side of the Canadian border as lost and wondering and confused as I am now? What if the PCT isn’t a life changing experience, but just another experience in a life? Is it possible to step off the map, only to find yourself on another map, walking down another road and wondering how you got there?

In planning to depart for the PCT I’ve tried, almost certainly in vain, to anticipate what is to come. As though by sheer volume of thought I could safeguard myself against future pain and disappointment. But the time has come to let go of all those thoughts and accept that I cannot know what is coming, and that I’m allowed to be scared. I’m allowed to be scared of change, and newness, and doing hard things, but I’m not allowed to not try. In electing to leave behind comfort and stability for something grand and unknowable, I’m accepting that fear is part of the process. But I want to believe that I’m the type of person who can do hard things, and the only way to prove that to myself is to do the hard things, and hopefully, to grow.

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The Whitest Thing I’ve Ever Done: Privilege and PCT Prep

For the last three months my life has been consumed with getting myself ready to hike the PCT. When I think about this adventure this constant nagging exhilaration floods the back of my brain. Lately that nag has crescendoed into a crashing wave that breaks throughout the day sending me reeling into daydreams of mountain trails and aching muscles. This hike combined with our intended move comport the majority of the conversations between Keith and myself. It’s ridiculous, it’s unflattering, it’s the exact kind of obsession that affluent white people get when they become bored and disenfranchised with their urban lives. I know it’s true. And I know it’s true for more than just us.

Expensive gear is expensive.

Scroll through the PCT Class of 2018 Facebook page and you’ll see 4,500 predominantly white, male, middle class folks talking about their increasing anxieties around this very privileged thing we’re all about to do. People buying and rebuying gear in an effort to shave pack weight – which is the thread that binds all talk about gear. Folks asking complete strangers with no credentials about highly personal decisions. There is aggressive fear mongering about everything from bears to snow to snakes to bug spray, it is endless and overwhelmingly uninformed. All of this is doused in the highly competitive culture of thru hiking. The problem that arises when you surround yourself in this very small bubble of outdoors culture, is that this bizarre behavior and subject matter takes on a patina of normalcy.

What is missing from these conversations is the recognition that hiking the PCT requires substantial financial, social, and lifestyle privileges that not everyone in our culture is afforded. More worryingly, is the thru hiking community’s rabid denial that privilege or access to resources has anything to do with attempting a successful thru hike.

An example.

A few weeks ago Keith and I had an argument, the kind which stems from attempting to plan a months long adventure. It was nearing 9pm and I had just finished sorting 60 days worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners into our 11 resupply boxes. The boxes were labeled, neatly organized, and waiting by the door to be shipped out. Just as I finished the last box Keith came home, noticed the boxes, and then we had an argument about how the boxes themselves were too big. He felt that I’d bought the wrong boxes. I told him they were the exact size he told me to buy, and would the phrase “thank you for working on this for four hours” possibly come out of his mouth? Of course, the obvious solution was to simply buy smaller boxes for our food and use the big boxes for moving. We ultimately came to this solution, but not before a good 20 minutes of huffy silence and apologies – it would seem that while thru hike planning is exciting, it can also turn both you and your partner into jerks.

Because PCT prep has become our normal, it took me some time to realize how much privilege this little spat reveals. This is exemplified by the fact that I have access to money to not only buy months worth of food ahead of time, but also to mail it to myself. Something I could never have done if I was living paycheck to paycheck. I have a family and friends who are willing, even eager, to spend their time to mail these boxes to me, because they have access to things like flex hours, PTO, and cars to tote boxes around in.

This brings us to the question: why do I need resupply boxes anyway? Because I was raised, and have always lived in suburban areas with easy access to nice grocery stores filled with fruits and veggies. Because I don’t even consider it an option to shop for my food the way that so many people in this country shop – out of mini marts and gas stations. Because even while backpacking I’m accustomed to a certain level of comfort, of privilege.

Of course, food is not the only cost associated with undertaking a thru hike. Drop into any backpacking forum, and the most prevalent discussion will be gear. Not cheap gear, mind you. No, to be a thru hiker you need the lightest, often most expensive gear. Because if you don’t have the lightest gear, then you won’t have a low enough base weight, and that of course means you’ll fail at your hike. As though there is some uniform for thru hiking that will ensure success.

And while there may not be a literal uniform you need to buy before you can hike the PCT, there is a shocking uniformity among those who undertake it.

Do me a favor and picture an outdoorsy person in your minds eye. Is that person a white able bodied man with a beard and a thin body? Does that person look a little or a lot like the Brawny paper towel cartoon with a backpack? There is a reason for this, and it’s directly related to who has been held up as the standard of the outdoors adventurer.

The history of white men exploring  the world exploded in popularity around the turn of the 20th century when men like Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen captured the world’s imagination by plundering into the furthest reaches of the globe. That standard dates back even further to when white Europeans claimed discovery of the Americas, as though there weren’t already people living here. We have told this story so many times that even in our minds the stereotype persists. Men are told that they are the purveyors of adventure, the owners of wild spaces. That is their privilege. The privilege to not only go where you want, and do what you want, but to be told by society at large that you are welcome and wanted there.

That is what privilege is: it is the inadvertent things in your life, things you did nothing to gain, that benefit you in a way that others are not benefited.

Privilege directly impacts not only the experience one will have when attempting a thru hike, but also the likelihood that you will even consider thru hiking as something that you can participate in.

Perhaps, another example. And because I know several of the men folk in my life will be reading this article with their defensive hackles raised, I want to address the privileges that are helping me get to the start of the PCT.

First, I was born to a middle class family living near abundant open spaces, as a result, my parents had the resources and free time to introduce me to the outdoors at a young age. Proximity to open spaces meant I had easy access all my life, and being outdoors was something that was normalized in the culture I grew up in. Because I come from a middle class family, I attended good schools all my life, I went to college, and ultimately I landed in a well paying job that affords me the ability to save enough money for a trip like this. As a white middle class woman, it is socially acceptable for me to up and quit my job for an extended walking vacation – nobody is going to think I’m a homeless vagrant. Additionally, falling within the parameters of conventional attractiveness means that people are kind to me while hitchhiking, I am not perceived as a threat, and they let my dirtiness and smelliness slide in a way that we do not offer other folks. I could go on, but I’ll hope that this abbreviated list serves to prove my point.

Planning to hike the PCT requires substantial capital in the forms of gear purchases, food, and free time. It requires access to nature and trails for training. It requires the social status to leave the working world behind for a time and literally escape social norms by fleeing into the woods. While I believe nature is for everyone, we currently do not live in a society that truly operates that way. Sadly, this is going to be one of those frustrating articles that ends in a gaping question mark, not a neatly concluded list of actionable steps. Tackling the issues of inclusivity and diversity in the outdoors is one of those wicked problems that will take time to solve, and will require those of us with access and privilege to change our behavior in a way that affords those same privileges to everyone.

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When Your Career is on Life Support, Sometimes it’s Best to Pull the Plug

“What about your career?” They said.

They have been my bosses, my friends, my relatives, and some complete strangers who just feel the need to voice their opinions. They have been confused that a young woman who just jumped from a big advertising agency, to an even bigger marketing company could simply be pulling the plug on what outwardly appears to be a smooth career trajectory from elite college graduate to a career headed towards more money, fancy job titles, and the cushy world or corporate credit cards and personal assistants.

But the truth is far less glamorous, and perhaps, a little more relatable. The truth is that my career has been a walking corpse for the last year and a half. The truth is that I have lied to the faces of many a person, told them my decision to leave my ad job – a job that I actually loved and was good at – was my own choice. I told them that my decision to take a job at a massive corporate marketing company was for the money, and the relaxed hours. And I’ve told  those same people that I was moving my career in a new direction, that it was done intentionally. But that is not the truth. Here is what really happened:

In early 2016 I was given the opportunity to start working as an art director at the advertising agency where I had worked as a video editor for three years. I was told that this would be a trial assignment, and that if I did well I’d be given a job as an art director. I worked so hard. I remember waking up at 4am to put in a few hours work before going into the office where I’d sometimes work until 10 at night. I held down my new duties and retained my old job, holding the edges of my career together with sheer force of will. For close to six months I worked two jobs within the same company. But it worked! The clients loved the work, they wanted to buy and produce some of our best ideas. I was thrilled! I bought champagne, I told my boyfriend that I’d done it, and that just like everybody told me, I saw that working hard gets you ahead.

But then before we could move into production, our client had a massive internal shake up. People lost their jobs, the project folded, and I was back at square one. I was disappointed, but grateful to still have a job, no complaining from me. So I started again, and my agency was all too eager to allow me to work myself into the ground. After all, it’s not like they were paying me more money. And while it would be easy to paint myself as the victim here, the reality is that I knew I should have left in the summer of 2016. But I loved the people I worked with, I liked the work I was doing, and I was being told that if I just hung in there I’d get the career I was so desperate to have. I was young, and hungry, and blind.

For the next 10 months I worked hours and hours of overtime, what would amount to two full months of OT hours in the span of a year. Two jobs, one company. I tried to launch new initiatives within the company, I tried and succeeded in impressing the most senior members of my agency. And then I got in my car and cried on the drive home a lot of nights. I took on freelance work to boost my flagging salary, I was passed over for promotions and raises because I wasn’t fully in anyone’s department and nobody took responsibility for me. I was a young woman in man’s world and I didn’t know how to speak up for myself, yet.

And finally, finally, after nearly a year and a half I saw the writing on the wall and I told them they either needed to offer me an art director position, or else I’d be stepping back into my editor role. Our talent manager tried to feed me a line about budget and getting the money for my salary but I wasn’t having it. It took me nearly two years to stand up for myself, but I finally did and it felt awesome! I went back to working under my old boss, I tried to launch a new production arm, I tried for the zillionth time to prove my worth, I continued to impress the leadership of my company, and I received the best review of my career. All of which I’m still very proud of. I was planning on leaving for the PCT in 2018, and I resolved to grit it out until then, be helpful, be the best worker bee I could be.

And then they laid me off.

I thought I was going into a meeting to negotiate a raise and instead they canned me and told me they hired my job out from under me to a 20-something dude from Dallas – talk about reading the room wrong!

And I never told anybody but my closest of close friends and family because all I could see was my personal failings. I was so humiliated. Laid off at 29. Who get’s laid off at 29? Probably lots of people, but nobody talks about it – I didn’t want to talk about it – because we’re so career oriented that I couldn’t bring myself to tell everybody how I’d failed.

When this new job offered me a decent salary, a close location, and a good title, I jumped at it, even though I knew that it wasn’t a good fit. My highest priority was getting to the start of the PCT in 2018 and getting out of LA. What I told everybody was a career leap was really more like grabbing a tree branch to keep yourself from falling off a cliff. I know that I’m lucky to have landed on my feet, that many people who lose their jobs have a far more precarious financial situation than I, and I am grateful that things turned out so well for me. Truly.

So, what about my career? Won’t hiking the PCT leave a big gap in my resume? What will employers think about a woman who gets a new job, works there for six months and then up and quits to romp through the woods for half a year?

Frankly, I don’t care.

I spent the last three years chasing the approval of those who told me my career should be my everything, and I have nothing to show for it.

Beyond giving corporate life the big middle finger in 2018, I’m also resolving to be more open and honest about it. Because if everybody was just a little more honest about work and life and the lie that work/life balance is a thing, then maybe we wouldn’t feel so hurt and scared when our careers fall apart. At least we’d know we’re not alone. Maybe you’re 23 and getting a degree you hate to appease your parents, maybe you’re 40 and you’ve just been canned from your dream job – the job you built your identity around- maybe you’re 60 and you’ve just been let go and woken up to the rude reality that your company never cared about you as a person. Whatever your reality, I bet you’re not alone.

Perhaps hiking the PCT will be the single worst thing I could do for my career, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case. Maybe placing our worth and identity at the center of what we do 9 to 5 is the worst thing we can do for ourselves. So I’m electing to try something new. I’m done believing that if I just put enough hard work tokens into the career machine that a shiny badge a validation and corporate success will pop out. I want to get out of a city where the first and most important question is: where do you work? And I’m ready to give this irreverent dirtbag life a try.

What’s the worst that can happen, they fire me?