---

This almost daily dispatch comes to you from the front row seating of the Black Ball Ferry, the Coho. Despite our best strategizing and hustling, we were unable to secure a booth with a table. I have yet to master the “ferry-boarding mad skills” required to snag one of those coveted spots, so here I am—laptop on my knees, navigating the waves.

But I digress.

In 2011, every Friday night, my husband, Harold, and I would play a game called: “Where in the world are we moving to today?” (Cue the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? theme song right about now).

The early 2000s had ushered in the holy trinity of digital exploration: City-Data, Craigslist, and Google Maps. These sites allowed us to peer into corners of the United States that beckoned to us from across state lines. At the time, it had been three years since I had graduated with my Master’s Degree in Psychology. Despite having ‘professional employment,’ we were still struggling financially. The math of our lives simply wasn’t adding up. I was struggling to keep food on the table and the AC set at 75. I couldn’t begin to hope for a housekeeper, a gardener, an inground swimming pool, or a pool boy.

As time passed, the Victor Valley was no longer the tranquil high-desert suburb of the bigger counties “down the hill.” To the uninitiated, “down the hill” meant traversing the Cajon Pass on Interstate 15—a physical and metaphorical descent. Growing up in Hesperia in the 1980s meant a wide-open landscape, riding horses, and making forts out of juniper bushes in the desert. But by the early 2000s, as a helicopter mom, I was trying to keep my kids safe in neighborhoods increasingly pockmarked by drive-by shootings and skyrocketing crime. The very neighborhood I grew up in required that I be detoured around a dead body lying in the street.

It made me question my very existence: What had I worked so hard for? What was I actually accomplishing? Why was I spending 3 hours a day on the Cajon Pass, hoping against hope that snow and ice didn’t take me out in the winter and wildfires during the summer.

By choice and by circumstance, we were a single-income household. Harold struggled with a heavy cocktail of anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Despite his best efforts, maintaining traditional employment was often beyond his grasp. When he did work outside the home, it left him with very few “spoons” to engage with the family.

(For those unfamiliar, “Spoon Theory” is a concept created by Christine Miserandino. It’s a way to visualize energy limitations; every task costs a “spoon,” and when you run out, you’re done for the day.)

By the time the bills were paid and the safety of the kids was managed, our spoons were gone. We weren’t just looking for a new house; we were looking for a way to breathe. To feel valid, worthy, not less than. The Joneses had won, and we were done trying to keep up.

But we weren’t running away—we were running to. We decided to chase Nirvana.

Through all of the research, the searching, and the “what ifs,” there was a constant, still, whispered voice: “You need to move.” It is hard to put into words the enormity of something that feels otherworldly, a spiritual knowing, something deeper than intuition. If you are inclined to believe in such things, this will resonate. If you aren’t, you will likely think I am a little “loo loo.” Both are accurate.

“You need to move.”

The whisper was a constant hum behind the scenes of my daily life, amplified during our Friday night internet hunts. Some nights were focused on Texas; others on Wisconsin. We even took a detour into Johnstown, Pennsylvania, hoping to lure my mom back to her childhood home. My mother, then in her 70s and settled in our family home for over thirty years, had made it crystal clear:

“Joy, I am not moving.”

As an only child in all functional capacities, I am legal guardian to my sister Amy. (For those of you new here, you can read my introduction to Amy here https://thejoysonajourney.com/2026/03/27/our-amy/) The majority of my major life decisions are filtered through the lens of how they will impact her, for better or worse. Layering that responsibility on top of the thought of leaving my mother—a widow—back in California with my sister, alone, created a very thick fog to wade through.

Yet the whisper didn’t stop.

“You need to move.”

By the end of 2011, the compass was set due North: we were going to relocate to Washington. We were preparing to make a leap of faith into a stark new reality we had only ever seen through a computer screen.

On Friday, the journey continues: “Come as You Are.”