Hey, you! I’m still here. The past month has been very busy with travel, a new job, making holiday plans and working on our wedding, but I’m going to try to make an effort to write more regularly. Even if it’s not strictly about green living, which I don’t have a whole lot of updates about for you right now! Blogging is funny, for me it can either be an outlet to relieve stress, or a source of stress if I’m being a perfectionist about it, which it has felt like for the past month–but I’m working on having it be the former 🙂 At any rate, I think I’m going to continue my mostly-break from social media a little while longer. It’s been very refreshing!
Anyways, today I wanted to write a little bit about how I am feeling lately and how I’m coping with it, for anyone else who is feeling similarly stuck in their life. Basically, I’m feeling stuck in California. I really don’t like living here! It’s polluted, overcrowded, the cost of living is so high, I miss my family and friends. But for a variety of reasons, I can’t move back to Minnesota just yet.
Another aspect of Minnesota that I miss is nature and the seasons. There are parks everywhere! We even have a not-so-little nature preserve full of coyotes, deer, raccoons, birds, turtles, and many small animals just a couple of miles from my mom’s house, in our tiny first-ring suburb. It’s glorious. I miss the brightly colored woods and the lakes. I miss cold weather! My mom told me that it might snow in Minnesota this week and I got insanely jealous.
Luckily, I’ve found a way to cope with that last part of Minnesota I miss. It’s not quite the same as being there, but I’ve started following a few blogs and Instagram accounts of people who live close to nature and really value it. It makes me feel a little bit less alone in this part of the world where people don’t really seem to care about nature or the seasons, or to be affected by a lack of them.
So today I’m sharing some of my favorite Internet haunts lately that cheer me up when I’m missing the colder seasons in Minnesota! In no real order…
- Jonna Jinton’s blog, YouTube, and Instagram. Her pictures are just breathtaking! She moved to rural northern Sweden a few years ago because she felt trapped in the city, so I feel as though I have someone who understands how I feel even if we have never talked.
- Michelle’s blog, YouTube, and Instagram, which has a lovely woodsy vibe. She also has some beautiful original music on YouTube. I particularly like this song of hers.
- @maudofthemoor on Instagram. Beautiful pictures of stony rolling hills and green countryside, and cats. (If you have lots of cat pictures in your feed, I automatically like you!)
- @oyeblikk on Instagram. She’s got lots of pictures of the woods with little elf-houses and figurines in them. It reminds me of the little gnome homes around Northfield and Lake Harriet in the Twin Cities.
- @snowsalla on Instagram. She posts pictures of the woods and countryside in Finland, along with the occasional pastry (which I’m not complaining about!).
- @nolemire on Instagram. Lots of fun old-fashioned costumes, beautiful fall foliage currently, and some cat pictures which I just can’t resist!
- This isn’t an “Internet haunt,” but I’ve been listening to the album “A Roof for the Rain” and Glen Hansard’s music on Spotify because they inspire home-ish feelings.
Missing a landscape is such a strange experience. I’ve never truly felt homesick until now–I assumed that if I just had E, I could live and be happy just about anywhere. But I don’t think that’s true for me. I think I would be happier living in Minnesota, even if E and I have to be apart for a little while.
I feel like I am missing a close relative, or even E, with how intense it is. I wake up every morning, roll over and look out the window, and expect flaming maple trees to be there, but I never get less sad that they’re not. I really feel like a fish out of water here. My small collection of Internet woods and natural places helps a lot, though! Even if you’re not in my shoes, I hope you enjoy them. These are some really talented photographers.
I hope you all are doing well, and I will hopefully write sooner than a month from now! <3