One year, one decade

Reflecting on two anniversaries

Celebrate the first anniversary of Itinerant Cat Lady with this special offer.

I hope you’ll indulge me while I pat myself on the back. By Substack’s count, this is Week 52 of Itinerant Cat Lady. I’ve been sending out these missives every Sunday for a whole year. I’ve also just realized that this month marks ten years since I put my stuff in storage, put Creepy Buddha in my backpack, and sallied forth.

Me and the Peace, British Columbia, summer of 2014

I want to make this post something like a retrospective, a little timeline of those early freaks of happenstance that got me started on this tangly, exhilarating way of living.

2014

When the year starts, I’m living in an apartment I love on York Street, just settled in after five years of student living. I’ve just bought myself a red Ikea sofa and consider giving it its own Instagram account, that’s how much I love it. When the landlord calls me in the spring of 2014 to say he’s putting the house on the market, my panic feels like exhilaration. What’s up with that, I think. Why is this news making me feel low-key happy?