Oo juicy question, Nikki! What comes up for me as an answer is actually a question to share in return, which is: What is your true top priority re: where to live?
Because I believe we can have some of what we want, but we likely can't have all of what we want (at least not at the same time). For example: I do not really like the town where I live (it's far from the kind of hiking I love most, it's been a struggle to make local friends, this kind of suburb is mostly big box stores/chains, things are very spread out and require a bunch of driving, the only politically engaged, values-aligned groups I've found are 40+ minutes away in larger cities, etc etc) and yet I'm committed to being here for the long haul because the housing situation (my partner and I live in a house his dad owns, where we don't pay rent/mortgage and where we have the yard space to garden and keep some animals) meets my top priority which is housing stability and at least a small measure of food sovereignty in a collapsing world.
So essentially the reflection questions are: What do you want MOST, and what are you willing/unwilling to sacrifice in order to have it? And then, along your chosen path, what can you do to find all the accessible joy possible from within the constraints?
Oo juicy question, Nikki! What comes up for me as an answer is actually a question to share in return, which is: What is your true top priority re: where to live?
Because I believe we can have some of what we want, but we likely can't have all of what we want (at least not at the same time). For example: I do not really like the town where I live (it's far from the kind of hiking I love most, it's been a struggle to make local friends, this kind of suburb is mostly big box stores/chains, things are very spread out and require a bunch of driving, the only politically engaged, values-aligned groups I've found are 40+ minutes away in larger cities, etc etc) and yet I'm committed to being here for the long haul because the housing situation (my partner and I live in a house his dad owns, where we don't pay rent/mortgage and where we have the yard space to garden and keep some animals) meets my top priority which is housing stability and at least a small measure of food sovereignty in a collapsing world.
So essentially the reflection questions are: What do you want MOST, and what are you willing/unwilling to sacrifice in order to have it? And then, along your chosen path, what can you do to find all the accessible joy possible from within the constraints?