how did I get here?
thirty-eight.
38. Today. May 16th.
I’m 38 years old. I’m on the brink of unemployment. On the edge of a canyon of adventure across Europe with my gorgeous life-partner and a beautiful toddler in tow.
How did I get here?
It only took 38 steps… of varying size and consequence. Let’s walk it back.
How I Got Here:
Step 38: Yesterday I got naked (besides Chacos and a neckerchief) and waded into the aptly named Icicle Creek and dove into the water for a baptism.
Step 37: After three years at KEXP, I gave notice and cried a lot. I am betting on myself and trusting my gut. Am I bigger than just my job? Can life be bigger? I am taking my family to Europe. We are home basing out of Lisa’s family’s home in London.
Step 36: I traveled to Texas eight times in 2022: five times to be with my mother through her breast cancer treatments, twice to be with Lisa and her family after her dad suddenly passed, and once to be with my whole family for the first time in seven years.
Step 35: On March 17, 2020, I had my beautiful daughter at the start of a terrifying pandemic. She was perfect and chunky. She went on to have hundreds of rashes that we came to find were because of allergies to dairy, eggs, peanuts, and cashews. She went on to have seizures that we came to find were because of fevers and not a brain tumor or a seizure disorder. She is a surprisingly chill baby with a very un-chill medical record.
Step 34: At nine months pregnant, I was hired at KEXP. A dream come true.
Step 33: I was pregnant! Again! And at two months pregnant, I was laid off from my advertising agency job. I was a Creative Director. Now, I was laid off and knocked up.
Step 32: I lost a pregnancy. I lost a baby. I crumbled. We crumbled.
Step 31: I was working as a Creative Director at an advertising agency, doing freelance radio stories for KBCS and KEXP. The days were long. A therapist told me to just get takeout for meals, because I was making enough money and Evan was working nights and I had big dreams and lots of work to do.
Step 30: In 2018, we moved to Seattle. And after a magic trip to France, Evan and I decided to pull the goalie and try to get pregnant. To start a family.
Step 29: After he finished nursing school, I let Evan pick our next move. The only ask was that we went to a bigger city. I wanted to see what my career could do. He wanted to be at a teaching hospital.
Step 28: My sister and her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter moved in with us from California. My sister needed a fresh start and needed some help. We were a family. After a not enough months, she made an excuse to go back to California with her daughter and there she relapsed and never came back to Montana. We missed her and her daughter like crazy. That time together was truly wonderful and cherished.
Step 27: We biked the 28 miles from downtown Jackson to String Lake in Grand Teton National Park. On the way, I changed into a short wedding dress. We waited out the rain and then married in front of our parents and our closest friends, before being run off by bears. It was perfect chaos.
Step 26: On the drive, on the move, from Missoula, Montana to our new home in Bozeman, Montana, Evan pulled over at a rest stop and asked me to marry him.
Step 25: As I was finishing my master’s degree, I accepted a job as the Digital Communications Director (later Art Director) at a boutique marketing agency that specialized in travel and outdoors. But this job was in Bozeman, Montana. So we had to move.
Step 24: I made a film about Evan called 20/Nothing that won an award from PBS and let me travel to Toronto to premiere it.
Step 23: Adventure Cycling offered a tuition reimbursement plan, so I applied/enrolled at the University of Montana for a degree in Media Arts. I originally thought I would be specializing in animation, but quickly fell in love with the storytelling of documentary filmmaking.
Step 22: I was in a horrible ski accident at Big Sky Resort. I was life-flighted back to Missoula. I ended up being okay, but it was hard for a long time. BUT. Evan and I had already started to truly fall in love in Missoula and this forged our relationship. Evan sponge bathed me. I saw him and his heart and knew I couldn’t let him go. He thought he could’ve lost me and didn’t want to lose me again.
Step 21: In October 2011, Evan called me and told me, “I just quit my job. Can I come live with you?”
Step 20: After floating the Middle Fork of the Salmon with some of the best people, we finally got back into service and I had a voicemail telling me I had got a job as a Graphic Designer at Adventure Cycling Association in Missoula, Montana. I told Evan I was moving to Missoula in August and he could come if he wanted. He said he didn’t really know. He had a pretty good job at the bagel shop.
Step 19: After my lease with my friend was up, I moved in with Evan waaaaay earlier than I should. My mom said, “Please don’t tell me you’re moving in with your boyfriend.” And I said, “Okay, well, what else do you want to talk about?” It all worked out.
Step 18: March 17, 2010, Evan picked me up from a printmaking class to take me to a St. Paddy’s party. We kissed that night. We decided we were a “we” that night.
Step 17: I went to Snow King to help my friend (of crawlspace-rental fame) learn how to ski. She brought another friend—Evan. Evan insisted we had met before. I insisted we hadn’t. We skied and laughed and then went to thrift store together and found some good stuff. This really set the tone for our whole relationship.
Step 16: I moved back to Jackson with no place to live and no job. I crashed on couches and worked about a hundred random jobs until I finally found a place with my friend and worked with adults with disabilities, nannied, and did freelance graphic design. I also started doing two shows on the new community radio station, KHOL.
Step 15: Things fell apart in Australia. I was let go of my nanny job after the dad lost his job only six months after being in Sydney. I needed to come back to the States, but I couldn’t move to Vermont. I couldn’t move there for a relationship that felt so unstable. So that relationship ended, by both our hands.
Step 14: In 2009, I moved to Sydney, Australia to be a nanny. I somehow got back together with a guy who only loved me when I left. We did long-distance and the plan was for me to move to Vermont (where he was going to law school) after I was done with the land down under.
Step 13: I ended up moving in with a co-worker, her two sisters, her boyfriend, and another Alpinist intern. We later rented my crawl-space out to another friend. We had seven people living in a four bedroom house that was falling apart in East Jackson. We called it The Swamp House. I started working for the Jackson Hole News & Guide. We partied. We climbed. We skied. We bike-ganged around town. We danced. We floated the river. We fell in love. We fell in like. We lived just like dirtbag 20-somethings should.
Step 12: In January 2007, I drove my rear-wheel drive Nissan X-Terra from Georgetown, Texas to Jackson, Wyoming. I was 21-years-old in a town where I knew no one. I moved in with three other strangers and paid $500/month in rent. The day I started at Alpinist, it was almost negative twenty degrees out. I tried to start my car and it just wouldn’t turn over—it was too cold. I put my head on the steering wheel and cried, asking myself, “What have I done?” I didn’t know a soul in town; I didn’t realize how much money and privilege that town had; I didn’t know it could get cold enough in Wyoming that cars don’t start, but soon none of that mattered. When I finally got to work, I met friends that would be some of my best throughout life. And a coworker from Seattle introduced me to 90.3 KEXP.
Step 11: I applied for an internship at Alpinist magazine and got rejected. The summer of 2006, I worked at a coffee/taco shop in Yosemite National Park and lived in a tent and climbed a ton. It was one of the best summers of my life. After my job ended, I drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and showed up to the Alpinist office to ask what I could do to work for the best climbing magazine in the world. I applied again for an internship and got one that started in 2007.
Step 10: I met so many wonderful people at UMHB, as I got my degree in Journalism and wrote for the newspaper. But I also figured out that the Christian culture was not for me. I hadn’t decided if Christianity was for me, but I knew that this culture wasn’t it for me. I realized the world might be bigger and I might be bigger.
Step 9: On my 18th birthday, all my friends and loved ones got together for a game of ultimate frisbee organized by Lisa. This was a perfect way to say goodbye to many friends before they left for the summer and then college. I was just going up the street to the Christian college—University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.
Step 8: In high school, I fell in love with going to concerts, making mix CDs for my friends, and being in the Church. I became very evangelical Christian and loved going to youth group, church camp, and leading Bible studies for kiddos. It was a lot of concerts being stone-cold sober, because I was so straight-laced… which honestly was probably better.
Step 7: I was six feet tall by middle school. I loved team sports and Alanis Morissette. I hated vegetables and my mangled teeth. I wrote a journal and listened to the radio (I’ve always LOVED terrestrial radio) and played imaginary scenarios out in my bedroom well into the night. I wore a floral printed towel around me and pretended to be a guest on Jay Leno (embarrassed I wasn’t a Dave Letterman gal yet… but then I was truly a Conan O’Brien kid soon after these mock-interviews) as a sat in front of the mirror. In my imagination, why was a guest? Unclear. I just felt bigger than my bedroom.
Step 6: My sister showed up in 1987 and she’s been intermittently present ever since. My brother showed up in 1994 and he not only completed the family, but he brought a calming, caring presence to every time we were together.
Step 5: At Georgetown Montessori School, I met Lisa Agiewich at age two and never looked back. She was my best friend immediately.
Step 4: On May 16, 1985, a Thursday, around noon, Virginia and Jim Stevens welcomed their first kid—a daughter with jet black hair.
Step 3: After finding out she was pregnant (a happy? accident) the now married couple decided east Austin was no place to raise a family and moved to Georgetown, Texas.
Step 2: At a bar called the Back Room, two 20-somethings met and fell in love. She drank gin and tonics and loved to dance. He worked at the bar and was an artist. He had an art opening he was working hard on and she told him she was proud of him and that’s when he knew.
Step 1: A boy from South Dakota hitch-hiked to Austin, Texas, because a bunch of friends who played music were moving there. A girl from Ohio finished radiology tech school in Florida and decided to move to Austin, Texas with her best friend, because aforementioned friend heard it was cool place to live.
This is how I got here. The short 38 steps of how I got to this day and this space and this place in my life. And before my Step 1, there were so many relationships that had to happen and love and heartbreak that had to happen exactly right for me to be here. And before those one thousand steps, there were millions more that take us to a universe filled with stars and light that had to strike exactly right for me to be here. For me to have laid in the grass with Evan this weekend and watch the stars of today and wait for one to fall, so I could make a wish and fall asleep.
When I think about how short my journey has been in the whole scheme of things, I think about why the hell wouldn’t I make sure that the next 38 steps are brave and bold and big? I may be small in the whole universe of stars, but there’s a feeling big within me. And I’m going to follow those big feels.
A Little Woo:
Turning In to Find Bigger Dreams: Wow, what’s happening today, on my birthday, is exactly what I’m feeling. Jupiter enters Taurus today and stays there for a year. I highly recommend reading that whole article, but this really struck me:
This year-long transit directs our attention to the importance of connecting with simplicity, cultivating a solid sense of self-worth, and tuning into the abundance within us and all around us yet without falling into excess.
Yep. And yes.
Totes Different:
No “Quick Hits” this week. Too much reflection for that. But I’m doing things different here. Subscribing to this news(love)letter is totally free and will stay that way for the foreseeable future. BUT I am about leave my job and I’m going to keep writing and pouring myself into this space. So if you can, please upgrade to a paid subscription. Not only will you have my undying love and genuine gratitude, but you’ll also get a sweet tote bag!
(don’t worry already subscribers… these ship out this week!) Thank you thank you for being here with me and helping me get here. I’m gonna keep going.
xxo,
Rachel.