Ali Sun and I have lived in Ojai for over seven years, the last four years spent in absolute paradise. We live in a back house on an estate, tucked into an avocado orchard. Our landlords are dear friends. Their eighteen month old son is a joy to watch grow. The doggies are fine specimens of Labrador. The people who work and live on the property are a pleasure. For the last four years, we have felt and said out loud every single day how blessed we are.
And we’re leaving February 27th to travel and work around the world.
How have we come to this place? The owners of the property are going to be listing it, wisely simplifying. We’ve had a great run, maybe one of the all-time great runs. And now we’re going to do what we have talked about doing for close to a decade.
My office is an impossibly thin MacBook Air. Ali Sun is an artist and a healer. While it will be unlikely she paints on six foot canvases, and I’ll make do with 13.3″ of screen real estate, there’s really nothing stopping us from doing this.
Yes, we’ll miss our friends and family. We’ll miss the nest of Ojai more than we know. We may miss certain creature comforts, such as a kitchen filled with Le Creuset, All-Clad and a santoku knife.
In exchange, we get adventure, culture, learning experiences, life lessons, joy, memories. We will live in countries where the primary language is Spanish, German or French with maybe some Dutch, Italian and Croatian thrown in to boot. Traveling to Asia still feels distant and dim, just starting to stir.
We now occupy this odd place and space – seven more weeks of Ojaian paradise before boarding a Copa jet at LAX, departing for the Caribbean beaches of Panama. It is incredibly exciting, not so scary, increasingly overwhelming with details.
Ali Sun and I are collaborating on Owl and Bear as a mutual opportunity. We have our own experiences, our eyes see the world in different ways. Together we hope to share our journey with friends and family, capturing this ephemeral adventure in words, photos and video. To infinity and beyond…