Trusting in the Timing of Your Life

Thoughts on a Cross-Country Move

I am huge fan of

Jess Pan

(highly recommend her first book, Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come), and always give an internal squeal when she drops a new story over on her newsletter

It'll Be Fun, They Said

. Her writing is warm and familiar, insightful, and just laugh-out-loud funny. Earlier this year, she reposted an interview that she did with

Jane Ratcliffe

and among the questions was, “What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?”. To which her reply was: “Trust in the timing of your life… Things will happen when they happen, and we actually have very little control over that.”

As someone who thought it was a good idea to agree to a manuscript deadline that falls two days after they pack up their entire life of 6 years and move across the country, I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve replayed that line in my head. In fact, at soon as I read her answer, I wrote it down on a little sticky note and it’s been hanging on my monitor ever since.

I initially came out to Seattle from the East Coast in 2018 to be with my then-boyfriend, now-husband Lee as he completed an internal medicine residency at UW. I arrived in late April and was subletting in Montlake, a gorgeous, affluent neighborhood nestled against Portage Bay and the city’s arboretum. Everything was lush and in full bloom and there wasn’t a single cloud in the robin’s egg blue sky. I was biking or walking everywhere, meeting new people left and right. This was in such stark contrast to Rhode Island where I came from. It had snowed a few weeks before and everything was still damp and sterile. The part of RI my parents lived in was all strip malls and paved cement. Seattle felt like an oasis. I was on a run, taking in the greenery, fresh air, the bay, and I remember thinking to myself, “I am NEVER moving back to Rhode Island again!!!”. Well, friends, never say never.

Between COVID and having our first son out here without any family support—all while my husband completed residency and then fellowship here—we have felt the pull to be back closer to our families on the East Coast for years now. We want our son to grow up being close with his extended family, and six-hour flights across three time-zones with a toddler have quickly gotten old. Also, have you heard about how expensive Seattle is? Well, it’s true and we’re over that too.

So, we started the job search for Lee last fall—we were between Virginia where his family is and Rhode Island where mine is. By the end of 2023, he accepted a position at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island that starts this fall. While there are pockets of RI I’m not crazy about, Providence itself is charming, walking and (for the most part) bike-friendly, and has a lot going on culturally. The food is pretty good too and if we’re over it, Boston and NYC (and Portland, ME!) aren’t too far away.

It’s certainly bittersweet. Seattle has been our home for the past 6 to 7 years and our friends have become our chosen family. The natural beauty here, with the Sound and its islands, the Cascades on one side of the city and the Olympics on the other, is unparalleled. And I will miss our little Columbia City neighborhood where the co-op grocery store, bakery, and coffee shop are all within walking distance, as is the weekly summer farmer’s market. And speaking of markets, I don’t know what I will do when I don’t have access to the abundance and diversity of local produce I’ve become accustomed to here. Maybe if our families lived on the same coast as us, we’d stay, but for now, where we are in this stage of life, it just feels like the right thing to do.

So Lee finished his cardiology fellowship in June, and we’ve spent all of July so far clearing out the house before the big MOVE. Or at least, Lee has. I’ve had my blinders on trying to finish this manuscript. I’ve only had three non-consecutive days to work on the cookbook this past year, and while I nailed the ~100 recipes, I saved all the writing for last. Would I do it again this way? Absolutely not.

Because let me tell you, writing is HARD. It squeezes everything out of you. Half the time, you feel like you’re just going in circles, taking two steps back for every step forward. So much self-doubt. Angst. Pure dread. Lee has been trying to get me to read John McPhee’s Draft No. 4, where he reflects extensively on the writing process, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Thankfully my friend Anna did listen to Lee and clearly benefited from it as seen by her most recent post. She pulled out this quote from McPhee’s essay:

You are working on a first draft and small wonder you’re unhappy. If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut out to do this, if your prose seems stillborn and you completely lack confidence, you must be a writer. If you say you see things differently and describe your efforts positively, if you tell people that you “just love to write,” you may be delusional. How could anyone ever know that something is good before it exists?

Yes, how can we know? It’s enough to drive any one crazy. But Bird by Bird you get through that first draft and I always find it’s a bit smoother sailing from there. So that’s how the book is going, if you were wondering ;)

The movers come on Friday to pack up all our things and we fly out next Tuesday on a one-way ticket to Providence. I have a few days at home, until I turn around and head to NYC for a week to photograph the book with Dane Tashima (check out his work, he’s soo good!). Then it’s write, write, write until I hand in the book at the end of August (thank God for extensions). Afterwards, we hop on a plane the following week to Tblisi, Georgia where we get to just have fun and soak up that part of the world through mid-October. A one last hurrah before Lee starts work in November. More on that later but right now, whew!

It’s a lot to juggle and trust me, there have been lots of tears. I can’t believe I have to split my mind between saying good bye to my home of so long and pouring my soul into this book at the same time. I will MISS you, Seattle. It hasn’t really sunk in (and I don’t think it will until we’re back from traveling and we’re landing in Boston, not Seattle). Thankfully, however, I have this little sticky note to remind me to just breathe and to TRUST in the timing of my life—because if there’s one thing life has proven to me is that you always get through it, one way or another.