Prototyping my life

It took me two weeks to dismantle my entire life.

It took me two weeks to dismantle my entire life. It was surprisingly easy once I got started. 

I began the way I begin any big life decision: I opened up a new spreadsheet. I created an itemized list of every single thing I owned. Most of it went into the “sell” column and was promptly listed on Marketplace. For two weeks, I operated a resale empire out of my garage. There was nothing I wasn’t willing to part with. I wore a jumpsuit and fanny pack. I gave my address to an inadvisable number of strangers online. Frequently, multiple people would show up at the same time, all looking confused, and I’d find myself asking questions like, “Are you here for the wooden hand or the velvet couch? The pink rug or the vacuum cleaner? The dishes or the charcoal grill?”

At one point, a guy drove up and offered to sell me seafood out of his trunk. This was right as Grace and I were attempting to heave my enormous standing desk into her car, which the fishmonger did not offer to help with. All that to say, in late September of 2022, there was a real block party vibe happening on Lemont Drive. (We politely declined the offer of car lobster.)

Within two weeks, I’d sold all my furniture and rented out my house. I enlisted my sister and brother-in-law’s help to load up the U-Haul on a sunny morning in September. We stacked my few remaining belongings in a teetering pile in a tiny storage unit. I did a final sweep of the house and handed over my keys — euphoric, light, and without a clue of what would come next.

---

I’d been toying with this idea for almost a year, but something kept holding me back. 

If you’d asked me then, I would have said it was the house. I had a thousand reasons not to leave and I’d run through them like a rosary: Financially, it doesn’t make sense. It’s so affordable. It’s so much space. I won’t find anything better. Where else would I go?

I feigned pragmatic concerns, but it wasn’t really about the house. It was what it stood for. The house had been a finish line. I’d been operating off a prescribed checklist for how to succeed in life (school, career, marriage, house) and I’d ticked the items off at a nauseating pace. College by 16, first job in my industry at 20, married at 22, homeowner by 26. Wow, I thought, not without some smug self-satisfaction. I’m really knocking this thing out of the park.

There were a few fundamental flaws with this plan, of course. First, that it was never really mine to begin with. I took for granted that this was what I should want. I never paused to consider if I actually did. My lifelong addiction to achievement had made my own desires a nonissue in the grand calculation of how to spend my life.

Then the marriage ended. A year passed. But there I was, still in the house, at the finish line of a race I never actually wanted to win.

Anxiety sat like a kettlebell on my chest that summer. I felt an ambient sense of panic that I couldn’t place. The house was feeling increasingly claustrophobic. My only reliable form of relief was walking, and I spent hours stomping around Shelby and climbing the paths at Beaman and hiking loops around Radnor Lake. I walked and walked and walked for months until the grief and anxiety and pressure-in-my-chest abated just a bit. 

Somewhere in those hundreds of miles, I noticed something peculiar happening inside me. Little flickers of desire. They would surface on these long walks, and I’d observe them like wildlife crossing my path. They started manageably small: I could take a drawing class. I could join a writing group. I could plan a trip for myself. But then they grew bigger: I could move within walking distance to my sister. I could move abroad, or to the west coast. Brooklyn, Portland, Paris, Lisbon, Sydney. I could start my own business and take every summer off. I could get a little cabin somewhere and write. I could get my MFA.

Thirty years of suppressed desires were all swarming to the surface at once. In the park, under the canopy of leaves, it brought to mind Sylvia Plath’s fig tree:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

I had been in my early twenties, newly married, when I first read that quote. Even then I noticed how I differed from Plath’s narrator: instead of being paralyzed by my options, I’d barely allowed myself to look at all the figs — all those possible lives — before plucking one. There was so much I loved about my life then. But still, I mourned the lives I’d never let myself want because I thought they were out of reach. I had assumed that the time for wanting was over. But now, ten years later, I was back at the base of the fig tree and it was blooming in reverse. Figs were un-shriveling, plumping back up, all these possible lives within arm’s reach again, ripe for the enjoying.

No wonder the house felt claustrophobic. No wonder my old life felt too small. It couldn’t fit all the possibilities that were suddenly open to me.

---

So I created the spreadsheet. I sold my things. Unburdened myself. Finally moved out. Made room for whatever came next, though I had no idea what that was going to be. Each possible life dangled in front of me like a fat purple fig, but I was stumped on how to narrow them down. 

I know the whole point of that Sylvia Plath quote was that by choosing one option, you inevitably give up the others, and must deal with the grief that comes with it. It’s the hard truth in The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us. It’s the entire thesis of finitude from Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, logged in Goodreads on my “Books That Changed Me” shelf. It’s the drumbeat of Dr. Mark Epstein’s Advice Not Given, also on said shelf. 

Of course that’s all true — but what if there was a way to get a little preview of each possible life first? A taste of each fig, if you will? Instead of committing sight-unseen to a faceless future, I wanted to test drive them first. Kick the tires a bit.

So that’s what I’ve decided to do in 2023. I’m calling this “prototyping” my life. That’s the word I’ve landed on: prototyping. Instead of other options such as tipping upside down, blowing up, going off the deep end, or coming unhinged. I’m conducting short-run experiments, miniature versions of all these possible futures, to see how they feel.

To make this possible, I’ve engineered my life for maximum flexibility: living light, short-term rentals with monthly leases, a closet that fits into a suitcase (as long as I wear my red leather trench, knee-high boots, and most of my sweaters on the plane). No pets, no partner, no permanent “home” to speak of. A savings account, a remote job, an updated passport, and figs as far as the eye can see.

---

A couple lives I’ve prototyped since September:

• Living with Libby: When I moved out of my house at the end of September, I spent 10 days living with my sister. We hadn’t lived together as adults before and it was lovely to experience all the mundane, everyday routines with her again. She’d make us coffee in the morning, and I’d drink it on their sunny front porch. I’d walk to the coffee shop to work for a bit, and we’d reconvene for happy hour cocktails while Spencer cooked us dinner. (Though I have to say that some of the habits I observed while living with her for a week made me truly believe in nature over nurture — who puts the cracked egg shells back in the carton? Barbaric.)

• NYC: After that, I flew to meet my best friend Melody in New York City where we consumed a remarkable amount of food and spent three straight days talking. One of my favorite moments on that trip, talking about what we’d tell our 20-year-old selves about being 30: “You won’t believe the things you’ll believe.” Melody left at the end of the weekend but I stayed and wandered the city alone, stalking the streets in a man’s overcoat. I got coffee, ate bagels, browsed bookstores, wrote, and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset. 

• Maine: From NYC, I took the bus to Boston, where I met up with three other friends and drove up the coast to Maine. We lived in a cabin together for a week, all working from various corners. We split bottles of wine and made roasted red pepper soup. Then we continued onto the coast. In Portland, we drank at warm bars in freezing rain. When the sun came out, we went to the water and climbed hills to lighthouses. We took a ferry ride and passed white sailboats against blazing red and orange foliage. We ate leftover Chinese food in bed while rewatching Fleabag from respective hotel beds. It was glorious.

• Nashville (again): When I got back to Nashville, I settled into a charming cottage in the middle of a forest of tall-skinnies, just a seven-minute walk to Libby. My bedroom and office are on the second floor, where sun streams in and I play music loud with the windows open. My office overlooks the neighbor’s backyard, which houses her prized possession: a 12-foot metal rooster, won in a cold war after the hot chicken place on Demonbreun closed down. She sometimes moves it around the yard a jump-scare for when her neighbors look out their windows. I like knowing a neighborhood well enough to know its lore. 

• Up next: This spring, I’ll be prototyping some different lives in Europe. 👀

All of these experiences have given me valuable intel about what I want. City vs. country. Solitude vs. community. Stability vs. novelty. Hot chicken vs. lobster rolls. Mostly though, testing out all these lives has called into question my deeply held assumptions about the kind of person I am. Selling all my belongings, not having a permanent home, living nomadically, moving abroad — I’m doing things that I didn't think I would do. I’m surprising myself, and I like what I’m learning.

---

Stay tuned for more findings! Submit your prototypes for me to test! Suggest a trip we should go on together! And, as I’m currently spending the week in Austin, Texas, please also send through any ATX food, coffee, and line-dancing recommendations.

Love, Lane 💋

Little obsessions

• Severance: A darkly comedic, haunting feat of storytelling and world-building in the vein of Black Mirror. The premise: A new technology allows office workers to have their memories surgically divided between their work and personal lives. When they’re at work, they remember nothing about their lives at home and vice versa. Taking “work-life” balance to its farthest extreme. AppleTV

• The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young: Known as “the sport’s world’s most guarded secret”, The Barkley Marathon is a cult-like race held here in Tennessee. In the 25 years it’s been held, only 11 people have ever finished. The admission fee is whatever the race’s founder, Laz, needs at the time: a pair of socks, a white shirt, a license plate from your hometown. The race officially begins when Laz lights his cigarette, which can happen any time between 3am and noon. The path is unmapped and includes tunneling under a prison. The documentary is on YouTube, and I recommend reading Leslie Jamison’s essay “The Immortal Horizon” as a companion piece. (h/t Haley Nahman for the rec!)

• Heartbreak Happy Hour: Shameless plug for my first official reading event! Come see me bear my soul at @porchtn’s Heartbreak Happy Hour on Feb. 5th. ❤️‍🔥 A comedic anti-Valentines storytelling event on the theme of love: bad dates, unrequited crushes, first loves, red flags, relationships gone sour. And boy do I have stories for you. 😈💋 Details here.