Hi friends & family,
I wrote this a few weeks ago before the war in Israel began. I’m sharing my writing because I believe introspection, even in the hardest of times, can provide us with clarity and a strong sense of how we can support one another and build a resilient community.
I’m hoping for safety for all of you and your loved ones. Please reach out if you’d like to talk, vent, and take your time reading — this newsletter isn’t going anywhere.
For those of you who are newer to my life or haven’t been keeping up this past year, I spent this last year traveling frequently (what I’ve recently dubbed as my “Love Tour,” shared by a friend who’s doing the same) to see the people I love, work remotely and search for what’s next in my life.
After farming (I wrote about my summer in my last email, linked below), I decided to take the High Holiday season to deepen my introspective practice and take stock of my life looking forward: where do I want to be a year from now? How do I want to spend the majority of my upcoming days? What matters most to me right now?
This year (again, read back to experience the details) has been full of friends (over 30 deep friendships across the globe), new climates (and a long winter), plenty of outdoor time (snowboarding, farming & hiking), working on my product management skills, and gaining skills (ukelele, handstands, farming, intentional communication, a bit of sewing, and plenty of others). Although I loved spending time with the people I cared about and trying new experiences, I often felt a lack of purpose — what was I really gaining in my travels and in my quality time?
Let me take a step back. What were the original reasons I decided to travel?
I felt a lack of nature in Philly, which I felt was impacting my mental health (and I didn’t enjoy wearing shoes all winter).
I had gripes with city living, namely the time that passes between spending quality time with others (I didn’t have the words to describe this at the time).
Many friends I wanted to spend time with & were making time for me were in different cities, which meant I was spending money to let my room sit empty.
Those were the biggest reasons I felt it was time to try out a new lifestyle. Do these stories and issues still feel accurate in my life? Not really! Although there are so many cities where these issues would appear again (and so many cities where these issues would be easier), these don’t feel like big issues in my life right now. What this tells me is that by changing my environment, I was able to shift what I’m focusing on. This might not be a mindblowing statement, but it’s provided me with a few realizations that matter a lot to me:
My environment makes a strong impact on my mental health, and I’ve seen it happen to me. If something doesn’t feel right, look around and see if there’s something that should change.
The people around me are also impacted by their environment, which I’ve seen as my friends have moved all over. I recognize that their lives should be seen in the grander picture of their chosen environment.
While environment matters, I have core values I hold for myself wherever I am. This is how I’ve found consistency in my life as I moved around.
These concepts (along with great conversations) helped me decide it was time for me to conduct a recap of my values and the experiences that led me to them. If I want purpose, I need to understand the stories, experiences, and life moments that provide me with purpose.
I’m often too abstract in my thoughts (an ex called me out on this constantly), so I wanted to piece together my values by selecting experiences that stood out to me as important. If I thought of a value I care for but couldn’t think of a reason it matters personally to me, that value isn’t core to my life purpose.
I iteratively posed 6 questions:
What is my focus — what do I genuinely love spending time on?
When have I felt most at home?
When have I felt most alive?
What experiences felt wrong and frustrating for me?
What items do I currently have on my life bucket list?
What are key movements I feel resonate to my identity?
Asking these questions was meant to be a gateway to building identity capital, an accumulation of who I am through my lived experiences and beliefs. If I could gather identity capital from this past year, maybe I’d stumble upon some sense of purpose!
What I ended up with was more than a collection of personal stories and beliefs — my scrap notecard now holds defining concepts I believe are core to my existence. Values I aim to maintain in each moment during my day are written on this card. Strategies that help me enact my values in my life and in the people around me are written on this card. The specific moments in my life that affirm those values and strategies are all written down on this card.
Writing out my identity capital helped me understand that what I’ve been doing this year was not a silly year of travel that needs justification, but a way to compare my vision of life with the people who I care about around me. I compiled a list of:
18 ways I love spending my time (like learning new info that impacts how I view the world),
10 replicable ways I can feel most at home (eg. creating pockets of time where there’s nothing pressing to do except spend time together),
11 activities that make me feel most alive (more like “being creative” and less like “skydiving,” — but that was fun too),
7 experiences that consistently reduce my mental health (like being social when I knew I wasn’t up to it),
4 goals that are currently on my bucket list (one to introduce mycelium into more growing systems), and,
11 movements around identities or mental concepts where I’d feel connected or inspired (like intentional community and naturalism).
Of course, I wasn’t wasting time by traveling! I was selecting the experiences I wanted, being and enacting myself during each moment, and understanding the values that I hold dear to my life. Anyone could’ve told me that, but I needed to get there myself.
Let’s Talk Values
Here are some of the high-level values and strategies I’m focusing on incorporating more closely into my life.
Fostering deeper and more genuine connections. I hope to do this by spending quality time and deepening my ability to show care for my community. This helps me feel fulfilled in my social purpose.
Caring for plants & ecosystems in my daily life. This includes caring for plants and practicing stewardship on a semi-frequent timescale, helping me feel appreciative and connected to nature.
Supporting community members in their personal growth journeys. To me, this means reaching out to people with radical honesty to understand their journeys & connect them with meaningful resources or a listening ear. This is to help me feel socially cared for.
Bridging the gap between personal experiences and data-driven solutions. I want to better utilize storytelling as a tool for conveying knowledge about improved quality of life and creating connections. This is doing something I love.
Striving for personal balance between individual pursuits and community engagement. The most important practices for me will be regular mindfulness and self-care, two methods that have improved my daily life drastically over the years.
So, what’s next?
Y’all have made me internalize this question so often, and I’m appreciative of your curiosity in me!
I’m looking for climate & soil health roles and potentially climate-related graduate programs. Send me recommendations, job offers, you name it. My need for purpose means I need to focus on what’s most important to me in this next phase of life — the sequestration of carbon in the soil using tried-and-true nature-developed tools.
I’m starting to write directly about my values and how I practice them each day, in the hope they help other people find themselves and lead a more content life. Maybe I’ll update my values, maybe I’ll write a book, maybe neither. But I’m definitely starting a new publication about my values and the art of practice.
I’ll post some updates & thoughts in my personal newsletter, but you should subscribe to my new publication, Life of Practice, to get them more often. You can read the first one by clicking below.
Note: I’ll keep posting to your inbox with personal life updates, and you don’t need to do anything to continue getting those. If you’d like to more frequently receive life practices you can do from anywhere, subscribe to my new publication.
You can skip this if you want, or you can read a quick rant about my Love Tour year:
Some things that I should be upfront about this past year, based on many conversations with people and a recognition that I’m both privileged and an oddity in what I enjoy doing with my time.
I’m privileged to have a remote job to finance my travels, I’m privileged to not need an in-person medical support system, and I’ve chosen a life devoid of pets or long-term relationships to keep me paying rent. I’m honored & lucky to have so many friends who are comfortable having me for long stays (so truly appreciative to have them in my life) and am comfortable staying on people’s couches.
This experience I took on isn’t for everyone — it’s really not for most people. I spent more time in the transitions than I did in a constant calm, which worked for me and others would do a whole lot to avoid (including paying rent and keeping a full-time job). Conversations with friends started off with jealousy (“This is so cool and I want to travel more”) and quickly moved to disinterest (“Here are all the reasons I actually wouldn’t enjoy that more”).
And I totally get the disinterest. Reading the written list of gripes that made me choose to nomad, there’s a part of me (and many voices from those in my life) that’s saying “Nadav, you’re being silly for changing your life for these reasons. This is part of growing up, get used to it like the rest of the world.” And this voice comes & goes just like all intrusive thoughts.
But I decided to take the plunge for a reason and, like my college degree, find an individual path to take. Because this is the person who I feel resembles me best, and these are the actions that let me feel most like myself. There are reasons to conform & follow set paths (which I of course do in some areas of my life), but I’m currently making my own life goals & actions. This year gave me experiences to gain clarity on who I am.
If you’re ever thinking of shaking things up in life, know I’m here. Let’s craft the life (no matter how much or little you want to change) to find what you’re searching for.
👋 Take care and please care for your loved ones!