I housesat for 11 weeks straight solo in New Zealand…
Turns out, that’s entirely too much time alone.
I’ve gone through a remarkable amount of isolationary periods in my life,
some unintentional –
growing up basically alone in the woods, you could say, was unintentional.
Forced upon me, creating the objectively strange creature that I am, who – as I’m reading through a ton of my old travel writing —apparently spent a lot of time writing:
“I JUST WANT TO BE ALONE.”
which leads to, well – all of the intentional time I’ve created in my life, completely alone.
And to be clear—I don’t necessarily mean lonely.
Loneliness, on the other hand, is subjective—the gap between the connection you have and the connection you actually want. And it can happen anywhere: in a house full of people, in a relationship, surrounded by friends.
And personally? I’d take being physically alone in the woods – random beaches with cutie little dogs, etc – over feeling unheard, unseen or disconnected in a room where I feel like I shouldn’t feel lonely.
Isolation, on the other hand?
I’m actually pretty damn good at it.
Maybe a little too good.
This though… deliberately booking 11 straight weeks of housesitting alone in New Zealand, trying to force myself into writing and editing…
That… did not work. Lmao. Who would’ve thought!
Humans are simply not wired to be completely isolated with just animals and no neighbors on an objectively very beautiful beach – while simultaneously questioning their own minds, with nothing to talk to but a little dog – and eventually a couple cats – for quite literally, months on end.
I told friends at the end of this specific stint – that it felt like a very long mushroom trip.
Basically not at all what I was expecting –
and exactly what I needed.
I found that complete isolation, trying to make sense and write from the life I had been living, while still living it, completely alone both in the country and an entire world away from my own country – does not provide conditions conducive to actually creating.
Instead, well—it forced me to process.
For one: the realization of how damn mean I spoke to myself.
There were days I’d wake up late at the bach—sleeping in with no alarm simply because I had the luxury of doing it, and because I was so tired – a bone-deep kind of weary from so much movement and travel and logistics for years on end.
I’d stare out at the ocean, hear the waves crashing, and tell myself I should go run.
Run. Edit. Write.
GO. Why aren’t you doing it?
And then it’d be four p.m. and I hadn’t wrote.
Sometimes, I hadn’t even gone outside.
That’s when the voice would get LOUD.
I was alone enough that I’d started talking to myself out loud, and the synonyms would just spiral—
useless.
lazy.
worthless.
the trash I came from.
And DAMN.
I’ve always considered myself… kind.
But the way I spoke to me?
Fuck, that wasn’t kind.
Not even close.
I wouldn’t ever speak like that to anyone else.
So why was I doing it to myself?
Honestly, that realization became a beautifully heartbreaking turning point I don’t think I ever would’ve reached without enough silence for my thoughts to get loud – I really, really needed to hear it.
I also realized that the months I’d spent questioning if I was insane were… pretty pointless.
I’m not insane. I’d just been through some objectively insane situations that created a very specific nervous system that is, well…a lil different.
Bad? No. Crazy? No. Different? Yes.
Honestly, the whole thing became a bit of a mental reckoning – but that’s a story for a different time.
And somewhere inside those 11 weeks came what I can only describe as a very intentional, quite literal, come-to-Jesus moment with my own life:
Pause.
Where are you going next?
No—not where can you go next?
Not what country, not what flight, not what adventure…
Where are you going?
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Every day of my second housesit, I’d sit down at the table –
a stranger’s cat on my lap and my feet,
anxiety coursing through my body that I’d let out with a hard-core dance much later
vibrantly colored sticky-notes spread around me –
with EVERY SINGLE OPTION.
All of them. Too many of them.
WRITE A BOOK – GET A MASTER’S – GO HOME AND START FLIPPING HOUSES
When it got to JOIN THE PEACE CORPS (a crossroads I’d already come to and declined once in this lifetime) – I’d stop.
Sometimes, I’d lose the day applying for a ton of jobs I didn’t really want but desperately wanted the stability of—-
and then, around 10 pm, I’d make myself stop.
I’d walk out to the housesit’s hot tub – a ritual I forced myself to do, every single day, even when I was completely spent from my own mental loops – and stare at the stars.
This absolutely incredible Milky Way that you can just SEE – no telescope, no camera, no long exposure trying to capture it and enhance it more than it was.
Just this impossible string of lights winking at me as I soak in someone else’s soothing hot water, on the other side of the world from my people and aging parents, talking to my older, smarter future self, asking her what she thought I should do..
and she’d just gently laugh, sit there with me, waiting for me to –
ACCEPT THE CLARITY
sit with it until it stops sounding so damn scary
– slowing down,
going HOME.
GROUNDING. CREATING. CONNECTING.
all these things I WANTED but required RETURNING – and STAYING –
basically the complete opposite of how I had lived for the previous 10 years.
For someone who had spent the better part of a decade leaving, moving, traveling, coming home just long enough to hug my family and switch out my gear before disappearing again—
returning with the intention to STAY was terrifying.
That year, for the first time in 10 years, I came home intentionally to stay.
Not to visit. Not to hug the fam, wash everything, switch the backpack from one climate to another and leave again. I came home because I had actually decided to.
Because after weeks of asking and bartering with myself alone in a foreign country and trying very hard to deny the answer – I finally understood that everything I actually wanted to create –
required a hard return, patience – and stillness.
And honestly so so truly, I truly believe some periods of intentional isolation are good… needed, NECESSARY.
Sometimes you have to disappear—to heal, to process, to figure out where the fuck you’re going.
Or, in my case this time, to get absolutely anything done.
Others can apparently do it all at the same time.
They live and share and edit and create all at the same time—
or so they make it seem, right?
I… CANNOT.
I throw myself so fully into whatever I am doing that it FULLY CONSUMES me.
And life –
oh my god, life has consumed,
in all the best ways.
And so – here I am again – two years later – in another RETURN, for remarkably the same reasons – and another truly intentional period of isolation at an odd point in time.
A strange sort of wintering in the middle of an American summer—after years of skipping winter for South America or the other side of the world, apparently all that avoided stillness had finally caught up with me.
Here is not so shipwrecked, moored, haven’t-seen-any-sign-of-life-besides-the-pet-I’m-cuddling-for-weeks-at-a-time, on-the-other-side-of-the-world-from-anyone-who-knows-me…
but life has still shrunk considerably.
To my small little Missouri town, my little tiny home in the woods, my best friends as my two little furry grey cats (okay maybe things didn’t change that much).
In this town I grew up in—that I never really felt included in—and now?
10+ years later, after a whole slew of life that both stretched and smashed me, I’ve put myself back together as a kaleidoscope of other cultures, languages, loves, patterns.
You could say here feels more isolating than a foreign country sometimes.
But again—that’s a whole other story in itself.
Here, I’ve gone back to lil solo forest life.
But this time – it’s actually working.
I’m actually creating.
Actually writing.
What the hell will come of it?
Frankly, I don’t know yet. Hopefully something – possibly nothing.
But we’re in the process.
and that at least,
feels right.
so if you see me come and go,
disappear and reappear,
just know –
it’s needed,
necessary.
an excavation of life,
of living.
A side-note for the travelers reading this, and an openly non-sponsored TrustedHousesitters review:
TrustedHousesitters has so completely upped my travel game.
For a year in New Zealand, I literally alternated between living/camping out of my $4,000 2005 Subaru Forester—aptly named ‘Lil Clunks (who was eventually stolen, what a horrific death, RIP ‘Lil Clunks, remind me to spill that tea someday) and staying in million-dollar homes.
Little New Zealand holiday homes called baches on private black-sand beaches. Winery farms. Big suburban homes. A lil Christchurch family home. All of it.
But for me, it was never really about the boujee part.
At all.
It was a way of slowing down in foreign places.
A way of putting the brakes on when I was burnt out. When I was tired of constantly figuring out where I was going, where I was staying, where I was showering, when I was doing laundry, what I was eating, what I was seeing, where I was sleeping, what I was supposed to be enjoying—
the weight of a thousand micro-decisions that somehow, eventually, makes you super HOMEsick.
Housesitting gave me a way to pause.
And for those of you who have always wanted a home, but never really had one, it can also be this strangely beautiful way of slipping into somebody else’s shoes for a minute.
Wake up in a real bed. Make coffee in someone else’s kitchen. Walk their neighborhood. Feed and cuddle their animals.
And wonder:
Would I want this? Do I want a home? Do I want a base? Would I want it to look like this? If not, what WOULD I want it to look like?
Do I want the life I’m currently leading?
And then, obviously, the best part: FREAKING ANIMALS.
Growing up with cats, one of the things I miss most when I travel is my cats. So…I find others. Cats. Dogs now too. Occasionally a bunny. A parrot. Chickens.
Adopt them momentarily, fall completely in love, paddleboard a river out to the ocean with someone else’s dog and suddenly realize: “OH. THIS IS WHY PEOPLE DOG,” sob when you leave.
You know, the usual.
I started housesitting through the platform in 2021 while living out of my van in California. My first sit was this very boujee San Diego historical home with one cat. And I remember thinking: Wait. You’re telling me I can stay here if I’m just a respectful human, cuddle and care for someone’s animals, clean up after myself, wash the dishes and sheets when I leave??? Ummm. Okay. YES, please. RAD.
Now, side-note part two: that obviously sounds way too simple. It is based on reviews, and frankly, I’m a damn good housesitter.
I’m a slightly OCD-neat, solo female traveler who often just wants to sleep, process, cuddle an animal, dance, write and edit—which is kind of housesitter heaven.
And I definitely grew up trailing behind my brother through all his Boy Scout / Eagle Scout stuff, so I operate very heavily on:
leave it better than you found it.
- in absolutely everything (humans, ideally, too)
So when I leave people’s homes?
SPARKLING.
Okay, travelers. That’s the TrustedHousesitters review you didn’t ask for, but probably needed.
That is all.
