Rest. Reset. Regeneration.

I lost a bit of myself over the last year and a half. I've gotten it back.

I am a changed woman.

No, that's not quite right. I'm a restored and renewed woman.

I left the US. For10 days. I took one of my college kids to her study abroad program in the UK. I took all social media off my phone for the trip, then dipped out completely from my work, from the silo of political social media discourse. It was the restorative break and total reset I hadn’t realized I so desperately needed.

See it as a fight. Or as a gift.

It’s no secret I’ve been struggling with this work. I have been having a real crisis - ethical, existential, psychological - when it comes to the direction my work has taken since Jan 2025...or maybe even earlier, since October 2024? For weeks and weeks I've been accumulating Substack drafts I can't bring myself to finish. I have scripts and notes for dozens of videos I can't make myself film. I often film vids I never publish. Why? Because I feel paralyzed by the question Is this helping?

It’s gone so far beyond burn out, and resenting all the political discourse. Y'all are probably sick of hearing me perennially wrestling in public about with whether social media is a net good for society. It’s daily agonizing over here about whether thinkpieces and punditry and endless political analysis are doing anything but making influencers rich, reinforcing the Democratic establishment, and sucking away so many precious hours of our lives.

I want to contribute to helping get us out of this mess. We can build a better world. Is the political discourse doing that? Not so sure anymore. (Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s hindering us.) But I do know that permaculture can help us create a just and regenerative future. I think we need Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share in our strategies and tactics more now than ever. This was the headspace I was in and where my thinking was at as I left with Bea to take her to London.

I came back from 10 days in England and Wales where I had been present in the moment, with long walks and afternoon naps and time to sort through my feelings about work. Before I left, I'd already committed to making big changes on my main YouTube and IRL work, but this trip gave me the space and perspective and TIME to really process and reset.

Why did I start a YouTube a decade ago? Where are my values? If I want a future with Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, how has my work over the last year and a half aligned with that goal and in what ways have I gone astray? This trip provided the time to sift through those questions with far more intentionality and care than I had previously.

I feel like I’ve come back to myself, and have recentered my work in my permaculture values. In just the last 2 days so many subscribers have left comments saying they’ve noticed a change in tone, focus and energy in my work and it’s a good change. A really good change. So thank you to the folks who have given me that feedback and confirmation.

Brave the rise and fall. Go on and feel it all.

Not gonna lie, making these changes to my content to better align with my values has immediately come with costs. Big ones. I lost 1000 subscribers in a handful of days. My revenue on YouTube is down 80% because I’m not cranking out 4-7 soul-sucking videos every single day on political-whatever-discourse-drama-nonsense. I’m being more intentional about what I cover and how I cover it, and I moved all of my political and resistance content to a smaller side channel.

But the cost has come with immediate and significant benefits. I don’t find myself muttering, “I lowkey wanna KMS,” a half dozen times a day. No longer chasing what does well in the algo gives me the freedom to make content that is meaningful and (hopefully) valuable to my audience, if not to the platforms.

Do I know how I’ll pay my bills now? Nope. But some things are worth more than 500k subscribers and the life-changing money YouTube brought me over the last year and a half. Things like integrity, restored mental health, being able to sleep at night, and regaining precious precious life hours. I’ll worry about the rest later.

What will you do with your one wild life?

I don’t want to endlessly reshash all the minutia of political discourse.
I want to fix America’s problems.
I don’t want to play endless back-n-forth discourse thinkpiece beef drama snark chasing the algo anymore. I want action. I want change. Let’s make those changes together. Because we deserve so much more than this.

And in order to make change, we have to dream of what a change world will look like. And we have to embrace radical, delusional optimism that bringing about change is possible and we can accomplish our dreams.

So, what does it look like to be relentlessly, radically, spitefully optimistic in an "abandon hope" propaganda-filled society struggling against fascism?

(Please take a moment and listen to this song by my beloved Gungor, below. Michael and Lisa are two amazing musicians who haven’t hesitated to process, change, and wrestle with hard things in public, even when it costs them. Their music is as lovely as it is grounding and thought-provoking. Their Song One Wild Life - inspired by Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day - is one of my all-time favorites.)

What does it look like to be forward-thinking and solution-minded and OPTIMISTIC in a social media landscape predicated on doomerism and catastrophizing for clicks?

In permaculture, we require our systems to obtain a yield. What is the yield of cynicism and nihilism? Better yet, what yield are we denying ourselves when we shut down our optimism? What possibilities, harvests, good things, better futures are open before us when we embrace optimism and chase our dreams?

These are the days we’ve been given. What will you do with each of them?

Thanks, as always, for letting me be a real person in process, stumbling through, course correcting, resetting, evolving in public. Thanks for struggling through and navigating these hard times with me. We all understand the assignment now. We get to dream together and take action together to get us where we need to go. What a privilege to be part of shaping a better future together.

See it as a loss or as a chance
Is it random chemistry
Or is it poetry?
These are the days we've been given
What will you do with each of them?
What will you do with your one wild life?
- Gungor, One Wild Life