talk me through any meltdown. She is, hands down, the most fiercely loyal, honest, fellow zombie-loving, and fun friend I’ve been lucky enough to find in my life. She read this entire novel at least four times in as many years and helped make it better each time.
Dr. Kathy Joseph not only answered countless veterinary questions and allowed me to shadow her at her clinic, but she is a strong, kick-ass woman, brave enough to trek out solo for what’s authentic. Here’s to goats in the house, to long talks over biryani and chai, and to “not interfering.” Thank you for my stay in your magical cottage, for my big, silly boy-cat, and, most of all, for your inspiration, affirmation, and friendship.
P.S.
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About the author
My Year as a Gypsy
I WAS RECENTLY HOMELESS for a year. Not “on the street” homeless but quite by choice without a home of my own. I called the experiment my “Year as a Gypsy.” It was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me . . . but it grew out of one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me.
My divorce was not my choice and a total blind side. I was unraveled for a blurry couple of years, unsure of what I wanted to do, where or how I wanted to live.
Self-pity is dangerous, shark-infested water to swim in, and very boring to boot, so I eventually took stock: this had happened. There was no changing it. So, how could I turn my divorce into an opportunity instead of a loss? What could this sudden single status and freedom allow me to do that I wouldn’t have done if I’d remained married?
And so it was that I left my salaried teaching position with good benefits (just as the economy was tanking, mind you) to take a stab at writing full-time. I gave up my apartment, put my most beloved possessions into storage—selling or giving away the rest—and kept only what I’d need for my year as a nomad.
The goal was to “experience the new”—which opens us to inspiration: to pare down and travel light, so that I could see more clearly; to give myself a year to explore what would be my next step in life.
I kept a journal along the way, recorded on my blog at www.katrinakittle.com.
May 19, 2008: After the garage sale, I’m down to one chair in my apartment. It belongs to my sister now, but she’s letting me keep it until I’m out of the apartment and on my adventure. I carry it upstairs when I use my desktop computer (now set up on my one remaining file cabinet). I carry it downstairs when I eat at the table. I’m realizing what I need and what I don’t. I can get by with so much less than I have been. Feels liberating.
I’ve always been a fan of the expression “Leap and the net will appear.” I’ve truly leaped. I better get busy weaving that net!
“I can get by with so much less than I have been. Feels liberating.”
June 13, 2008: Last day of school. The movers came today. I turned in my apartment keys. I have done it. I have begun my journey. I’m officially homeless. I am in my first temporary home (house-sitting for friends on vacation). I’ve had this magnet on my fridge for years that says, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.” I have. I am. I can’t stop grinning.
At first I still kept too much stuff. I arrived at my first house-sitting gig in a car so loaded down I looked like a Beverly Hillbilly. With each move (and early that summer, I was moving nearly every ten days or so) I streamlined more.
I think the possessions we think we “need” are very characterizing of us. Along with the obvious writer tools—my laptop, my printer, my ten-pound thesaurus—I also carried a French press, a coffee-bean grinder, a spring-form cake pan, and a small Godzilla figurine to eighteen different “homes” over the course of the next three hundred sixty-five days.
I set up my writing space next to a pool, in a lush garden full of hummingbirds, in a kitchen with a giant Frisch’s Big Boy looking down on me, on a deck overlooking a Dayton MetroPark, and in a magical cottage where a goat sometimes danced down my sidewalk. I kept my former school schedule as my writing schedule that first summer.
In September,