May 7, 2018 • 40 mins
We enjoyed our interview with Victoria Price so much that we wanted to give you a chance to hear it in full.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
H m hm. Hey, this is Dylan and I'm Kathleen,
and we have a little bonus this week. We really
enjoyed our conversation with Victoria Price that we did for
our episode on Feeling Lost, and so we wanted to
share the whole conversation with you. Yes, so here it is.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
(00:20):
So reading your story, it's just a beautiful story that
kind of brings up urges in in someone who has
felt any sort of lack of direction or fear of
another decade coming to a close. Um But for our listeners,
we love a little bit of backstory on maybe how
(00:42):
you came to this lifestyle and some of the reservations
you may have had. Sure well, I grew up in
a family that valued accumulation, and I grew up in
a family then in a way embodied the American ideals.
I grew up in a nine thousands bare foot house
with a family who drove a Rolls Royce, a dad
(01:05):
who was an iconic, world famous movie star, and our
house was My mother was a designer, so our house
was constantly photographed, and it was in architectural digest or
house and garden and and so it was really this
lifestyle that was very much about, uh, the things that
surrounded you, bolstering this idea that life is about accumulation
(01:30):
and possession and identity and all of those things. And
when you're a kid, you just sort of take that
in and you think, oh, whatever. But as you get older,
you realize there's a value placed on those things. And
from the time I was young, I found myself wanting
to pull away from that, but not really understanding what
it meant. So when I was in my early twenties,
(01:51):
I lived in the mountains to the east of Albuquerque,
New Mexico, in a log cabin with no running water
and no heat, and we squatted and we dug our
own out houses, and I would go out with a
chainsaw that had been stolen from the US Force Service,
not by me, and uh and go out and cut
my own firewood. And I did that for two years,
(02:13):
and I just had this urge to feel what it
would be like to not be surrounded by fame and
fortune and all of that stuff. But eventually, of course,
I got called back into that world. And I feel
like my whole life has kind of been this this
push pull this ebb and flow between the world that
I grew up in, which is the world that we're
all taught to aspire to in a way, this world
(02:36):
of having and being and an identity, and then this
feeling that I never felt like myself in that world. Fully,
it's it's tantalizing, it's appealing. It you feel good when
you have the stuff and you but I never really
felt like myself. And I realized that, Like one of
the best days of my life I can remember was
(02:58):
I didn't have anyone to go child the wood with
and I drove, you know, two and a half hours
out with my dog by myself with the chainsaw, and
I chopped all the wood and I halt put loaded
it all up into the pickup, and I drove it back.
And I remember feeling like nobody ever taught me I
could be this self sufficient. So that was in my twenties,
but it gave me the feeling that I could survive anywhere.
(03:21):
But by the end of my forties, I was really
in this place where again this push pull like I'd
kept my life had kept falling apart and I never
really understood why. And then I kept rebuilding it back
to be what I thought it was supposed to be,
and then it would get back to where it was
supposed to be, and I thought, I don't really like this.
And at the end of my forties, I had this
kind of conversation with myself in the mirror, and I thought, Wow,
(03:42):
you're doing everything right, and you keep doing everything right,
and you're miserable. And I vowed that I would change
my life, but I had no idea how. And what
finally I came to realize was I had to be
willing to lose everybody else's idea of who I should be.
I had to be willing to lose us, all the
old stories that had attached themselves to me. I had
(04:04):
to be willing to lose the world's idea of what
we're supposed to do, what we should do. That word should, honestly,
I think it's misspelled. I think it should be four
letters because it behaves like a four letter word in
our lives. You know, the moment we're shooting all over ourselves.
We are not listening to our hearts. And so the
(04:24):
last seven years have been this path, sort of this
path of being willing to get lost. And the funny
thing is so I'm at the end of I believe
in seven year cycles, and I'm at the end of
the seven years, and people keep saying how do you feel?
And honestly, I think I thought I would feel like, oh,
I know what I'm supposed to do. I do know
what I'm supposed to do, but not in the way
(04:45):
I thought, because when people say how do you feel,
I have to say I feel lost. But this time
it's a beautiful thing. It's not a scary thing, because
I think what being lost does is it invites three
words that were told to be scared of, but I
think they're the biggest invitation and to change. It's the
words I don't know. You know, when we're little, right,
(05:05):
nobody's going to say to a six year old, listen, okay,
so I need to know how you're going to make
that first car payment fifteen years from now. You know
who's going to say that to a six year old.
Six year olds going to go like, WHOA, what's a
car payment? We know that little kids are supposed to
live in the I don't know, because it's by living
the I don't know that you develop faith and you
learn to face your fears and you feel what freedom is,
(05:28):
So that's this beautiful thing, right, But as adults were
taught that I don't know is scary, Well, how are
you going to make that car payment? And what are
you going to be doing ten years from now? And
what is your job description? And honestly letting go of
all of that, even though sometimes it is totally scary,
I've really feel I really feel like I've found resources
(05:49):
I never knew I had, and I've learned to listen
to that part of me that I shut off when
I was way too young. And I think that even younger,
we're telling kids that they should know like eighteen, which
is what I really experienced of kids being like I
don't know what my career is going to be, or
like what I should study or what like how do
(06:12):
I make a car payment? But we're pushing that younger
and younger, so that sense of like being six and
not having to know is seeming to like really disappear,
especially now with the access to information kids. You know,
as a kid, I didn't know how food ended up
on the table. And you know, no matter what your
sense of you know, grow up in great privileges I
did or none. There is this sense that there's some
(06:35):
world out there that we don't know how it works.
But I'm not sure that that really happens for much
past six now because kids have access to so much information,
you can find out how everything works, so there is
no mystery, but there every day there's mystery. We're fooling
ourselves if we think we know. You know, if I
said to you, so you know, what are you gonna
do tonight? You could tell me your plans, but you
(06:57):
have no way of knowing how you're going to feel
tonight or what you're doing. You know what you really
will end up doing or where it will take you.
And when we embrace that, I don't know, it's somehow
opens us up to really what the world is like
in a in a very beautiful way. And you have
to be willing to get lost in order to actually
(07:18):
find who you are in your heart. Yeah, definitely, And
it's still it's like terrifying journey, but it's just something
there is very beautiful. I think a lot of us
and our lives can look back to that time that
we were just terrified, but and then also finding strength
within yourself, Like what you said, it's like I had
no idea. I was capable of so many things until
I pushed myself, you know, to completely let go and
(07:40):
be lost. But and I was always somebody who was
a control freak, right, and so in a way I
took away my control. And even now, what I'm learning
to do is to say, if somebody says, you know
where you're going to stay tonight, I used to have
a plan, and now I say, I don't know, because
I don't know. Opens it up to being exactly where
you are in the moment. I think that's the other
(08:02):
thing we're not taught to do is to be present
right now. We're always thinking what's going to happen down
the line, what's going to happen in the future, And
we have this idea that that makes us feel safe,
but it really doesn't, because all it is is it's
making us not be where we are right now and
then worry about where we're going to be instead of
being present and grateful and where we are. It just
(08:22):
puts us like in a box of worry and verified
at all times what's to come, and we just totally
forget about just being in the moment exactly. I think
that makes time move faster because there's a sense of
urgency to get the next thing done. Yes, But one
thing going back to your experience in your twenties when
kind of squatting and and learning how to interact with
(08:45):
the land, and I think that that's something that even
though there is a lot of information available to us,
it's it's digestible, but we're still not experiencing it, right,
So right, we have this idea that if we've read
about it, we've done it. Yeah, and it's it's completely
eye opening to actually do it and experience it. And
(09:07):
that seems like it it must when you when you
find yourself in situations like that. I don't want to
speak for you, but it seems like that must be
very satisfying. It's satisfying, and it's also really interesting to
recognize when you get a certain sort of push comes
to shove moments, you recognize that you don't always have
the skills to make decisions that you thought you would.
(09:30):
Because I don't know about you, guys, but I always
have this idea that somebody out there might really actually
know what we're supposed to do. And I think there's
you know, maybe a larger higher presence kind of somebody,
But in my head there's still this idea that maybe
someone's going to know what I should do in a
given moment. And a couple of weeks ago, I was
(09:52):
in this place where I really didn't know what to do,
and I wasn't feeling great, and I didn't know should
I keep pushing, should I stop? Should I us for help?
Should I not ask for help? And the hardest part
was not those questions. It was this sense of not
knowing how to ask those questions and listen for the answers.
(10:12):
Even after two years of being intentionally homeless, I still
had this idea that maybe somebody out there knew a
better way. And I remember, you know, sort of reaching
out and asking for help and then realizing that no
matter how many different answers I got, I had to
learn to listen. And for me, you know, I have
a really deep spiritual practice. And what it did was
(10:34):
it made me realize that even in my spiritual practice,
I was kind of willing my way through certain questions like, um,
what do I do now? Well, I'm just going to
go here instead of you know, sometimes you have to
be willing to stand at that fork in the road
until you really here, go left, go right, and stand
(10:54):
there for a while, and maybe it rains on you,
and maybe you know, forty seven cars passed, and maybe
people come up to you and are like, do you
need help, and you're like, yeah, but you can't help me.
You have to be willing to stand there. And then
at some point. The funny thing is, I think you
end up realizing that you've heard the answer already. You
just didn't know how to listen to it, you know,
(11:16):
And the answer maybe wasn't like you were thinking, please
tell me go left, go right, go left, all right,
but really what you heard was, you know, that town
Richardsville sounds interesting, and you know Richardsville is left, and
then you and and then somebody you know pulls up
and they say, I'm heading richards Ville. Do you need
you know? Are you heading that way? And everything's been
(11:37):
saying Richardsville and you haven't known how to listen to it.
So I think one of the things that we come
to realize is all the answers are inside of us,
and we're so busy listening to all the static of
the world that we've forgotten how to listen. So the
moment of being lost is actually this really beautiful thing
because it's that moment where all the answers of the
(11:57):
world no longer satisfy us, because you know, looking back
on those times in your lives where you felt lost,
right when the answer came, it was in you. It
wasn't like, you know, you got some skywriting that said,
you know, now go to grad school. You know, it
(12:17):
was like the answer was in you and you were like, oh, yeah,
you know right, I always did love doing that, or
I was thought I'd end up, you know, doing something
like that, or wow, my friends have been saying that,
you know, it's there. Yeah, it's always been there, exactly
what happens almost every time I think, But it's it's
it seems like it's about finding that stillness, absolutely, and
(12:39):
we are not a society that's comfortable with being still
and being open to it, being completely open to it,
and we're terrified of it. We just like love to
pack on as much noise and outside voices as possible,
but rarely are we okay with being still with our
own right. Well, you know, now they're saying the number
one addiction more than opioids is technology, and so you know,
(13:03):
if you think about it, because I'm on the road.
So sometimes I really have this idea, like today, I'm
going to check Facebook and then I'm going to feel
connected to everybody. So there I go through scrolling through Facebook,
and I, you know, I think it'll take five minutes.
It takes fifteen. I don't even like Facebook, and I'm
even post on Facebook. And I get to the bottom of,
you know whatever, I've gotten to the bottom of, and
(13:23):
I think I feel so disconnected, right. I feel worse
than if I had just literally gone for a walk
with my dog met somebody out there, we talked about
dogs or flowers or birds or whatever. That would have
been genuine connection. I don't know that person. I might
never see that person again. But that's real connection. Not
(13:46):
wondering what my friend from high school is doing on
her ski trip in the Sierra Nevadas. That's not connection.
You know. I don't think anyone ever feel leaves scrolling
feeling connected. I don't I ever feel like that feels great,
that feels like a genuine connection. And I can tell
this from experience. I mean, I've been sitting in a
box and talking to strangers every weekend, and I've never
(14:08):
felt so connected to people in my life. Yes, exactly,
And that's part of the beauty of getting lost. When
you get lost, you have to ask for help, so
you have to talk to people you wouldn't normally talk to.
And all of a sudden, you realize all these people
that were told to be scared of, they're not scary.
There's something to talk about with everybody. I mean, yes,
there are people that we probably should listen to that
(14:30):
little inner wisdom like, yeah, maybe not that person, but
really the majority of people, we can always find common ground.
And when we find common ground with people that we're
told we're not supposed to find common ground with, all
of a sudden, we feel connected, right, and we feel
better opening up to someone we wouldn't have otherwise. Yeah,
that's beautiful because that's kind of the that's yeah, that's
(14:52):
literally our thesis of the show, and like it's what
we've come you know, it's really what we figured out
is that, you know, every weekend there does seem to
be a pattern to people's answers, and so many different
people walk into this booth and I speak to people
that I would have never gotten the chance otherwise, and
I just kind of realized that man we are way
more similar than we are different, And I think that's
(15:13):
so important right now because we're really that's like tearing
us apart um. So it's really beautiful and it brings
us hope. We see that every weekend. Well, you know,
that's one of the beauties of living on the road.
First of all, I travel with this adorable, fluffy white dog,
so she's like my love mayor right of the world.
Everybody nobody looks at me and was like, oh, what
a cute little dog. And then you're having a conversation.
(15:34):
Nobody cares because you're you love dogs, right. But even
one time I almost ran out of gas when I
got it's a gas with a gas station ended up
being like two miles in the middle of nowhere in
like South Carolina, and I pull in to get gas
like on fumes and there I am with my new
Mexico plates and my roof box and my dog, and
(15:55):
I look around and everybody the median age what they're
all men. They're all in pick up trucks with shotgun racks,
and you know, they range from like forty to sixty.
And in that little moment, that voice in my head said, oh,
be aware, of your surroundings. And I thought, okay, well
that's common sense, especially as a woman, you should be
aware of your surroundings. And then the next voice was,
but don't be afraid. And so I'm filling up the
(16:19):
tank and I see this guy and we're in South
Carolina with a Green Bay Packers T shirt on. I'm
a big sports fan, and I just couldn't help myself.
I'm like, hey, what are you doing down here? A
Green Bay Packers? I mean, you know, it just seems
little ridiculous, right, you know. And he looked at me
and he and it was like and he walks over,
and I'm now at this point in the car and
he puts his arm his hand on my arm, you know,
(16:43):
and I'm like, and he goes, what do you say?
And I said, green Bay Packers? You know, do you
have like many friends down here? What are you doing
down here? He's like, I know, right, he said, well,
I love my Packers. I'm not even from Wisconsin. And
he goes on and on and on about the Packers
and then um, he said, well, who are you we
do a fan of? I said, I'm a Broncos. Oh
the Broncos. Peyton you know, we start talking and then
(17:04):
he calls the other guys over, so it's in to
me and the toothless shotgun guys, you know, and we're
all talking football. There's always something we have in common.
And they didn't see anything, you know, they didn't see
like someone with short hair and tattoos driving a car
with new Mexico plates with a fluffy white dog, who like,
what the heck is she doing here? They saw, Oh,
(17:25):
my god, Green Bay Packers and football and Broncos and
we love Peyton and all of a sudden, there's that
common ground, and there is always common ground, and we're
taught the opposite. We're taught to look for what to
be afraid of instead of to find what we have
in common. And you're right, there is way more that
we have in common. We all get up in the
(17:46):
morning and think oh or wow, or you know, we
all go to bed at night praying about something we
all have lost and gained and you know, fallen in
love and fallen out of love and worried about how
we're gonna pay every single person on this point in
the hands. And we're taught to find the differences and
that's crazy. Yeah, And it's harmful. Harmful, Yeah, and it
(18:08):
closes you off from beautiful experiences like that. I think
those are just amazing. And also being on the road,
I think we can all we all look back at
those fun experiences. It's just you know, letting ourselves open
up to them. It's just amazing. Yeah. We'll be right
back with more from Victoria after the break. M h
m hm hm. Are there any other beautiful experiences from
(18:36):
being lost that come to mind? Yeah? You know, I
have a practice. I drive the back roads, and I
do it on purpose because it's all well and good
to talk about. Well there's us and them and people.
You know, we're so different from them, and they're so
different from us or whoever they and we are, right,
But when you drive the back roads, you really look
(18:57):
at how a lot of people who feel this enfranchised
in this country live, because this is an urban culture.
Everything you see on TV is about urban lifestyles, and
these are people who have you know, lived for generations
or choosing to live way. I mean, I drive the
back back roads, right, and so when I first started
(19:18):
to drive them, I would get lost, and eventually at
some point I would get so lost that I would
get panicked, and I would really begin to look at
that panic, like, what are you scared of that you're
going to have to go knock on someone's door and
ask for help. But what I really began to realize
was that everybody I ran into on the back roads,
(19:39):
I've lived in rural places, and one of the things
when you live in rural places, especially if you live
in mountain roads, which I've lived on, you always wave
at everybody when you pass them. And so one of
the things I noticed was that in my fear, I'd
be clenched so tight that I wouldn't behave like I
normally would, you know. And but if I remember to
(20:00):
just be present and wave, I would see all the
help all around me. And at one point I was
taking this photograph it's still one of my favorite photographs
I photographed on the road, and I'm standing in the
middle of the road and I'm waiting for the cars
to pass to get this shot, and every single car
stopped and asked me if I needed help, no matter,
and and I never felt scared, I never felt harassed.
(20:22):
I felt like everybody genuinely wanted to make sure I
was okay. On the same road trip. So it was
this reminder that help is all around, you know, it's
always there. So on the same road trip um I
was in driving from Colorado to Texas and the sky
started to get like super super dark, and I've gotten
(20:42):
stuck in the Texas Panhandle and ice storms and lightning storms,
and I started to get worried because it was tornado season,
and I started to get that totally anxious feeling. And
I'm driving along and I checked the weather and it
shows there's major weather coming my way. And I'm thinking,
what an idiot you should and taking the back roads.
Who cares about those photographs and those nice people you
(21:03):
talked to about help? You should have stayed on that,
you know, And I'm like, no, you do this as
a practice. What does a practice mean? A practice means
you have to be present right where you are. So
I'm driving on this back road and all of a sudden,
I swear to you. You know, we all have this thing,
especially those of us who are raised Christian, where we think,
like when we're really lost, like please God give me
a burning bush, you know. So I'm driving along like thinking,
(21:27):
am I crazy? What am I doing? What am I doing?
And then all the questions come in right, and I
swear to God, this red stream of light, like something
out of you know, like a sci fi movie, about
ten miles ahead of me, beams straight down like one
stream of bright red light. And it was there for
(21:47):
the whole ten miles that I drove. And I'm looking
at this thing, and I'm trying to take pictures and
I'm like, oh my god. And right after it disappeared,
it started to pour like that kind of torrential. You
can't gully washer, you can't see anything. And I have
this big smile on my face because I realized the
whole day was my burning bush. That every time, like
(22:10):
I thought, oh my god, I'm in the middle of nowhere.
If something happened, what would I do. Everybody came and
talked to me and asked me if I needed help.
And then when I thought, god, I'm crazy for taking
these back roads. I could have already been at the hotel,
you know, in on a highway, there's my burning bush moment.
And what it what it really taught me was whenever
we're led to get lost, we're going to be bombarded
(22:32):
with voices telling us this is not safe, this is
not cool, and exactly the opposite happens. If we can
stick with it, the people, the situations, the messages from
the universe will come and they will say to us,
you know, you're in exactly the right place and you
are safe. And the next day when I got to
my job, you know, it had taken me a lot
(22:52):
longer because driving the back roads takes longer. And my
um my client. I got there and my client was like, wow,
you seems so energized. You worked all weekend in Colorado
and then you just drove two days. And I'm like, yeah,
because when you really show up to your own heart,
the world shows up to you. And we're not taught that.
(23:14):
We are not taught that. We're like, find the plans,
stick to it. It's like, you know what the plan is,
not what we think it is. That's beautiful. I know,
thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, it was.
I'll never forget it. I have a little crappy cell
phone picture and you can see it, but it was,
you know, the little stream of light, but it's nothing
(23:35):
like I mean, it really was like, Okay, that'll be
a burning bush, I think, yeah, but it's got to
be moments like that that just get burned into your
mind if you didn't capture them in a photograph, and
the kind of ones that reminds you to be present. Yes, no,
we're just so not taught how to be present, and
(23:57):
and technology addiction is make in a million times worse.
I was raised as a kid to not watch a
lot of TV, even though my dad was an actor,
and so consequently, in my mind, like, because I don't
have a home, I can go months without turning on
a television, and but if I go to a restaurant
where there's a TV on, I'm like as a zomb
(24:20):
I can barely converse with the people I'm with and
it's mes merrick, you know, And I think, and I
realized the little screen is like that too. I'll be
driving and I'll be like on a seven hour drive
and this little voice in my head said, oh, you
better check the thing. It's like, really, what what on
earth could be happening that is so important that you
have to check it? And then the big piece of
advice I have to say is if something if you
(24:43):
wake up in the middle of the night and you
think check your phone, don't because nothing ever good will
happen at two in the morning on your phone. You
will not get an email telling you you've one publishing
clearing house. You will not find the love of your
life on match dot com. Nothing good will come of
checking anything at two in the morning, you know, and
(25:04):
we think, oh, it's our little babysitter, and it makes
everything worse. You know. That's another time to really be
willing to get lost, to get lost in the fear
of two in the morning, and begin to train yourself
to realize that all of those voices in our heads.
You know, that's the big question, like what is the
thing that scares you it to in the morning? Everything
scares you it too in the morning, you know, And
so being willing to really sit with that and find
(25:25):
a way to start to lose those voices that are
so scary and realize that we have that piece inside
of us. We're not trying to do that, you know.
We're trying to just keep busy and keep going. Yeah, definitely,
And just like you said, we're not trained to do
these things, and we're trained to have a plan. Um,
did you have any criticism or friends and family being
(25:48):
like what are you doing? Like what you Thank God?
My parents aren't alive, You're veering from your plan. Yeah,
you know. I think the thing is that my closest
friends knew that I was unhappy. You know. They kept
looking at my life and people would look at it
from the outside and go, Wow, you're so successful and
(26:08):
this is going so well. I never felt that. I
never felt successful, And I think they knew that I
was being called to something that wasn't going to have
like a job description. Oh you know, it's going to
be out there. I have to go. I knew that
I had to kind of go in search, and I'm
still searching. You know. The book is is out, and
(26:29):
I'm doing this back roads book tour and I'm doing
talks all over the place. But even in all of that,
i still feel like there's a way I need to
help other people be able to step into doing that.
And I'm still exploring the best because technology, unfortunately is
the means to reach the most people. You can't actually,
(26:51):
I mean, I am on the road all the time,
but even so, technology reaches more people. But I want
to find a way of doing it that's in a
holistic way, not in a way of just here's one
more toolkit that you add into your tool kit that
you add into your planning and so as I'm really
thinking about that, which is happening by talking to people,
because people tell you what they need, people tell you
(27:11):
what's missing, people ask you the questions like I was
at dinner with someone last night. He said, do you
ever feel fear? I was like, all the time, are
you kidding? And then he proceeded to share his fears
and we talked about fear, and so yeah, I got
a lot of the funniest thing that happens to me
is I'll say to people I'm intentionally homeless, and they're like, wow,
(27:34):
so where do you live. I'm like, no, home less
because people can't really process it, and then there's usually
like one of three responses. One is oh my god,
I'm so jealous. That's the smallest number, but it's like
a pipe dream for people. The majority of people are like,
I could never do that, and then the third group
(27:59):
is actually literally who cannot even process it, which shows
that everything we do in our society is based around
this idea of home. And some people are nomads, you know,
whole cultures are nomadic, but we're not built to be nomadic.
In fact, there's whole things you can't do in our society,
like insurance. You know, insurance is built around an idea
(28:20):
of a domicile. You know, there's no there's whole sectors
of our society that aren't built for people who choose
to live differently, whatever that difference is. Yeah, definitely, And
and it's crazy because by people saying I can't even imagine,
that proves right that people can't imagine, and they won't
force themselves or like open themselves up to even the idea. So,
(28:44):
oh my gosh, we have a little more with Victoria
in just a moment. We'll be right back. M m m.
What is your definition your personal definition of home? Mm hmmm.
So that's been a big thing that I learned, right
(29:05):
because home was so important to my parents. Uh, we
moved a lot, but the idea of home was this
place where you could shut the door and shut especially
if you were famous, you could shut the world out
and be yourself. It was also a place that absolutely
reflected who you were to anyone who came in the door.
(29:27):
And I've made my living as a designer for years
and that's my job. My job is for somebody to
explain in words and some visuals who they are and
for me to help them create a space that reflects
who they are. Right. So that was my idea of
what home was. It was a sanctuary, and it was
a place that reflected who I was to anyone who
walked in the door and back to myself as well.
(29:48):
So to lose all of that right to have no
door you can shut and to have sort of nothing
that expresses that, I was like, whoa, you know, what
is home? And what I realized was that the more
we lose our hearts, the more we have a need
for something concrete. And the more I found my heart again,
(30:09):
the more I realized all the places I could feel
at home. The other day, I was my editor from
my book happens to live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and so
I stayed with her. That's where I was born. Really yeah,
it's really. It was really pretty day and I was
staying in the nice neighborhood where she lives, and we
she has a dog and I have a dog, and
so we took this long walk and everything was blooming.
(30:29):
It was beautiful, and I kept hearing this voice in
my head saying, I'm so happy I'm so happy. And
happy didn't mean I wanted to immediately, like buy a
house in that neighborhood. Happy didn't mean like Knoxville is
now number one on my list of places I want
to live. I was happy because I was walking having
a wonderful conversation with somebody that I enjoy conversing with.
(30:52):
Because you work on a book so intensely with someone
right you, you get to know them really well. I
was walking looking at nature. Our dogs were having the
best time, and I was fully present right where I
was in my heart, and I thought I read this
blog called Daily Practice of Joy, and the definition of
joy I like best is the pure and simple delight
(31:14):
in being alive, delight in being alive, And for me,
that's what home is. When I'm in my heart filled
with joy, I feel this delight in being alive, which
automatically connects me to the environment and to the animals
and to other people, and then I'm home wherever I am,
which is so not me. When I first started staying
(31:36):
at other people's houses, I was like, did they clean
their toilets? Wow? I wouldn't use that hand soape, you know.
I was like the designer in me or the person
I was like, I missed my towels, you know, because
there's things that feel like safe, right, and I'm like,
oh my god, it's so nice to be in someone's
space and feel their sense of home and how wonderful
(31:56):
is this and how fortunate am I to be here? Yeah?
I love that it's home is um can be people.
Home can be a moment. M. Yeah, that's that's a
kind of a liberating way of thinking about it. It's
a really liberating way of thinking about it. And I
have to change it up all the time because I
(32:17):
tend to be a loner, but when you live on
the road three sixty five days a year, being a
loner actually can turn into lonely. And so I actually
have to recognize that that need to have my own space,
or that enjoyment of my own space that's changing for
me because I don't have a home, so sometimes to
(32:38):
be in my own space, I'm in a strangers space,
and it's actually like an airbnb or a hotel that
someone's put me up in. So when I now, I
make a point of staying with friends for longer stretches
of time, and then I find that I get to
know their neighborhoods, and I get to know, like I
like that that particular market, and I like that particular
place to go get a smoothie. And then I realized, like, oh,
(33:00):
I have these little homes all over and it's really fun.
And I think, like, we never go out of our
way to stay with our friends too. I feel like
it's even if you don't live on the road and
you visit somewhere you have a friend who lives there,
but you just feel so um. You feel like it's
an inconvenience and you feel uncomfortable, and you think, oh,
I'll just get a hotel. But every time you stay
(33:22):
with a friend, you just have this amazing Usually you
have this amazing experience that opens you up to where
they live in their neighborhood and why it's important to them,
and then you grow closer. It's so fascinating that we
run away from that experience exactly my mother, we never
we never even stayed with family members. We were always
just like the two of us. And I was brought
up that way. And now you know, I love it.
(33:44):
I really look forward to it, and I find myself
sort of inviting myself back and I hear it coming
out and I was like, oh, I'd love to come back.
Oh is that okay to say? But for most people
it really is. People love sharing, you know there especially
if you know you learn how to be a decent
house guest. Yes, always make breakfast for people. That's always
have a big question, the big question. I have a
(34:07):
big question, Um, what what would you tell someone who
maybe is feeling lost in their heart and their soul?
So the key for me to really finding a good
way of being lost, because there is that sense of
being lost of literally like you're bouncing off the walls
(34:28):
and you're you know, the voices are reverberating inside your
head and you have no way of stilling them. I
cannot over emphasize enough the need to develop a practice.
And for me, my practice was about finding what I've
come to call my magic word. What I realized was
(34:48):
the word joy. That's where I write this blog called
Daily Practice of Joy. The word joy for me is
this word that always gets me out of my head.
Joy is not a cerebral thing. Joy is not a
head trip. It's on an idea. Joy always gets me
out of my head and into my heart the moment
I'm in my heart, I cannot help but connect with
people around me, and then I care about the world
(35:10):
and then it's like it sort of makes the circle
come around full. And so joy is like my reset button.
Joys like my litmus test of whether I should do something.
Joys my sweet spot for sure, And so finding what
that was and it's not joy for everybody. I've begun
asking people, and people have thrown out all kinds of
different words, surrender, balance, connection, savor, um aw. You know,
(35:39):
people have different qualities. That is that thing that gets
them out of their head and into their heart. Finding
that quality within yourself that's like that override button. But
then the kicker is developing a practice of it that
you do every single day, because if you don't do that,
it's just easy just are rattling around in your head.
(36:01):
And when you're lost, you know, when you're feeling really
crappy about everything, it's like all you can hear is
what's wrong. So finding a practice that works for you.
So for some people, gratitude is the word, and gratitude
making a list every single day of what you're grateful
for is like that thing that kicks you out of
(36:22):
that feeling. But having a practice isn't about having a
practice that gives you a specific outcome. It's about having
a practice that keeps you in your heart, and the
moment you're in your heart that actually becoming lost is
a good thing. You realize it's it's our fear of
getting lost is our head doesn't have the answer. The
(36:44):
joy of getting lost is realizing our head doesn't have
the answer, and but that our heart always does, and
that when we connect with other people's hearts, their hearts
always do, and our hearts together do. It's like, you
know what you said about talking to people. Here we
are are being bombarded with all these reasons to be
scared of each other, and you start talking to people
and they start talking to you, and we realize how
(37:06):
much we crave that heart connection and how much we
all have in common. Right, So the thing is you
have a practice of that. Now every single weekend you
go talk to people, Which now means that during the
week talking to people that you might not talk to
otherwise is starting to become a practice in your life.
You know in a way that probably when you graduated
(37:27):
from high school, it wasn't you had your friends you
talk to them, they were the safe people. Now, I
mean for me, I go to horror conventions all the time.
I don't like being scared. I don't understand why anyone
would want to be scared. But I love horror fans.
My dad made horror movies, right, and so now when
I see people that I know that a lot of
the world is scared of, like there Spiger and they
have tattoos and their goths and they're pierced and all
(37:50):
of these things, I immediately look at them and go,
oh my god. I know they're going to be totally
sweet and we're gonna have a great conversation the moment
we start and I'll go over and they'll sort of
look at me like what do you want. I'll be like, hey,
so blah blah blah, you know, and we end up
having the sweet conversation. I still don't want to be
scared in a movie, you know, and they want to
tell me all the reasons it's awesome to be scared.
But there's always this common ground, right, because we're kindred spirits,
(38:13):
and usually horror fans felt like outsiders. I felt like
an outsider, just a different kind of outsider. So I
think the real thing is developing these practices, whatever they are,
that when push comes to shove in those terrifying moments
of your life, you make yourself do them because it's
the voices in your head that will scree up every
single time. And whatever the practice is that can get
(38:34):
you out of your head, that'll save your life. That's amazing. Yeah.
I love the word practice because practice is eternal. You
can't master and it's good master them because you're always learning. Yeah,
it's not really about mastering, it's about every day showing up. Yeah.
And I think that's we struggle with that too. I
(38:55):
think every day it's like you try to pick up
a practice or something that makes you feel better, and
they feel like you should get better at it or
you should be a master of it. But just to
let yourself learn and it be part of your daily
life so way more rewarding and empowering. Yeah. And the
other thing is to learn from other people. I went
to a uh AN event or I was talking about
(39:17):
joy actually was my event and um, and somebody said, oh,
joy is my word too. And every year I make
a list of ten joy practices and he said, usually
it's interesting. I've been doing this for twenty years, Like
four of them say the same and six of them
change every every year. And I was like, thank you
for saying that, because I realized I'd gotten in a rut.
(39:40):
I was like, practice, so I'm having my joy practice,
you know, And and I was doing my joy practices
and they weren't bringing me joy. So then I was like, oh,
all right. You know, practice isn't about doing the same thing.
It's the quality of practice. And the quality of practice
is about anything that just short circuits those, you know,
the chattering monkeys in our heads. We hope you enjoyed
(40:08):
hearing more from Victoria Price. Her book is called The
Way of Being Lost, and it's a great read. We'll
be back with another regularly scheduled episode, but until then,
see you in the question Booth.
H m hm. Hey, this is Dylan and I'm Kathleen,
and we have a little bonus this week. We really
enjoyed our conversation with Victoria Price that we did for
our episode on Feeling Lost, and so we wanted to
share the whole conversation with you. Yes, so here it is.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
(00:20):
So reading your story, it's just a beautiful story that
kind of brings up urges in in someone who has
felt any sort of lack of direction or fear of
another decade coming to a close. Um But for our listeners,
we love a little bit of backstory on maybe how
(00:42):
you came to this lifestyle and some of the reservations
you may have had. Sure well, I grew up in
a family that valued accumulation, and I grew up in
a family then in a way embodied the American ideals.
I grew up in a nine thousands bare foot house
with a family who drove a Rolls Royce, a dad
(01:05):
who was an iconic, world famous movie star, and our
house was My mother was a designer, so our house
was constantly photographed, and it was in architectural digest or
house and garden and and so it was really this
lifestyle that was very much about, uh, the things that
surrounded you, bolstering this idea that life is about accumulation
(01:30):
and possession and identity and all of those things. And
when you're a kid, you just sort of take that
in and you think, oh, whatever. But as you get older,
you realize there's a value placed on those things. And
from the time I was young, I found myself wanting
to pull away from that, but not really understanding what
it meant. So when I was in my early twenties,
(01:51):
I lived in the mountains to the east of Albuquerque,
New Mexico, in a log cabin with no running water
and no heat, and we squatted and we dug our
own out houses, and I would go out with a
chainsaw that had been stolen from the US Force Service,
not by me, and uh and go out and cut
my own firewood. And I did that for two years,
(02:13):
and I just had this urge to feel what it
would be like to not be surrounded by fame and
fortune and all of that stuff. But eventually, of course,
I got called back into that world. And I feel
like my whole life has kind of been this this
push pull this ebb and flow between the world that
I grew up in, which is the world that we're
all taught to aspire to in a way, this world
(02:36):
of having and being and an identity, and then this
feeling that I never felt like myself in that world. Fully,
it's it's tantalizing, it's appealing. It you feel good when
you have the stuff and you but I never really
felt like myself. And I realized that, Like one of
the best days of my life I can remember was
(02:58):
I didn't have anyone to go child the wood with
and I drove, you know, two and a half hours
out with my dog by myself with the chainsaw, and
I chopped all the wood and I halt put loaded
it all up into the pickup, and I drove it back.
And I remember feeling like nobody ever taught me I
could be this self sufficient. So that was in my twenties,
but it gave me the feeling that I could survive anywhere.
(03:21):
But by the end of my forties, I was really
in this place where again this push pull like I'd
kept my life had kept falling apart and I never
really understood why. And then I kept rebuilding it back
to be what I thought it was supposed to be,
and then it would get back to where it was
supposed to be, and I thought, I don't really like this.
And at the end of my forties, I had this
kind of conversation with myself in the mirror, and I thought, Wow,
(03:42):
you're doing everything right, and you keep doing everything right,
and you're miserable. And I vowed that I would change
my life, but I had no idea how. And what
finally I came to realize was I had to be
willing to lose everybody else's idea of who I should be.
I had to be willing to lose us, all the
old stories that had attached themselves to me. I had
(04:04):
to be willing to lose the world's idea of what
we're supposed to do, what we should do. That word should, honestly,
I think it's misspelled. I think it should be four
letters because it behaves like a four letter word in
our lives. You know, the moment we're shooting all over ourselves.
We are not listening to our hearts. And so the
(04:24):
last seven years have been this path, sort of this
path of being willing to get lost. And the funny
thing is so I'm at the end of I believe
in seven year cycles, and I'm at the end of
the seven years, and people keep saying how do you feel?
And honestly, I think I thought I would feel like, oh,
I know what I'm supposed to do. I do know
what I'm supposed to do, but not in the way
(04:45):
I thought, because when people say how do you feel,
I have to say I feel lost. But this time
it's a beautiful thing. It's not a scary thing, because
I think what being lost does is it invites three
words that were told to be scared of, but I
think they're the biggest invitation and to change. It's the
words I don't know. You know, when we're little, right,
(05:05):
nobody's going to say to a six year old, listen, okay,
so I need to know how you're going to make
that first car payment fifteen years from now. You know
who's going to say that to a six year old.
Six year olds going to go like, WHOA, what's a
car payment? We know that little kids are supposed to
live in the I don't know, because it's by living
the I don't know that you develop faith and you
learn to face your fears and you feel what freedom is,
(05:28):
So that's this beautiful thing, right, But as adults were
taught that I don't know is scary, Well, how are
you going to make that car payment? And what are
you going to be doing ten years from now? And
what is your job description? And honestly letting go of
all of that, even though sometimes it is totally scary,
I've really feel I really feel like I've found resources
(05:49):
I never knew I had, and I've learned to listen
to that part of me that I shut off when
I was way too young. And I think that even younger,
we're telling kids that they should know like eighteen, which
is what I really experienced of kids being like I
don't know what my career is going to be, or
like what I should study or what like how do
(06:12):
I make a car payment? But we're pushing that younger
and younger, so that sense of like being six and
not having to know is seeming to like really disappear,
especially now with the access to information kids. You know,
as a kid, I didn't know how food ended up
on the table. And you know, no matter what your
sense of you know, grow up in great privileges I
did or none. There is this sense that there's some
(06:35):
world out there that we don't know how it works.
But I'm not sure that that really happens for much
past six now because kids have access to so much information,
you can find out how everything works, so there is
no mystery, but there every day there's mystery. We're fooling
ourselves if we think we know. You know, if I
said to you, so you know, what are you gonna
do tonight? You could tell me your plans, but you
(06:57):
have no way of knowing how you're going to feel
tonight or what you're doing. You know what you really
will end up doing or where it will take you.
And when we embrace that, I don't know, it's somehow
opens us up to really what the world is like
in a in a very beautiful way. And you have
to be willing to get lost in order to actually
(07:18):
find who you are in your heart. Yeah, definitely, And
it's still it's like terrifying journey, but it's just something
there is very beautiful. I think a lot of us
and our lives can look back to that time that
we were just terrified, but and then also finding strength
within yourself, Like what you said, it's like I had
no idea. I was capable of so many things until
I pushed myself, you know, to completely let go and
(07:40):
be lost. But and I was always somebody who was
a control freak, right, and so in a way I
took away my control. And even now, what I'm learning
to do is to say, if somebody says, you know
where you're going to stay tonight, I used to have
a plan, and now I say, I don't know, because
I don't know. Opens it up to being exactly where
you are in the moment. I think that's the other
(08:02):
thing we're not taught to do is to be present
right now. We're always thinking what's going to happen down
the line, what's going to happen in the future, And
we have this idea that that makes us feel safe,
but it really doesn't, because all it is is it's
making us not be where we are right now and
then worry about where we're going to be instead of
being present and grateful and where we are. It just
(08:22):
puts us like in a box of worry and verified
at all times what's to come, and we just totally
forget about just being in the moment exactly. I think
that makes time move faster because there's a sense of
urgency to get the next thing done. Yes, But one
thing going back to your experience in your twenties when
kind of squatting and and learning how to interact with
(08:45):
the land, and I think that that's something that even
though there is a lot of information available to us,
it's it's digestible, but we're still not experiencing it, right,
So right, we have this idea that if we've read
about it, we've done it. Yeah, and it's it's completely
eye opening to actually do it and experience it. And
(09:07):
that seems like it it must when you when you
find yourself in situations like that. I don't want to
speak for you, but it seems like that must be
very satisfying. It's satisfying, and it's also really interesting to
recognize when you get a certain sort of push comes
to shove moments, you recognize that you don't always have
the skills to make decisions that you thought you would.
(09:30):
Because I don't know about you, guys, but I always
have this idea that somebody out there might really actually
know what we're supposed to do. And I think there's
you know, maybe a larger higher presence kind of somebody,
But in my head there's still this idea that maybe
someone's going to know what I should do in a
given moment. And a couple of weeks ago, I was
(09:52):
in this place where I really didn't know what to do,
and I wasn't feeling great, and I didn't know should
I keep pushing, should I stop? Should I us for help?
Should I not ask for help? And the hardest part
was not those questions. It was this sense of not
knowing how to ask those questions and listen for the answers.
(10:12):
Even after two years of being intentionally homeless, I still
had this idea that maybe somebody out there knew a
better way. And I remember, you know, sort of reaching
out and asking for help and then realizing that no
matter how many different answers I got, I had to
learn to listen. And for me, you know, I have
a really deep spiritual practice. And what it did was
(10:34):
it made me realize that even in my spiritual practice,
I was kind of willing my way through certain questions like, um,
what do I do now? Well, I'm just going to
go here instead of you know, sometimes you have to
be willing to stand at that fork in the road
until you really here, go left, go right, and stand
(10:54):
there for a while, and maybe it rains on you,
and maybe you know, forty seven cars passed, and maybe
people come up to you and are like, do you
need help, and you're like, yeah, but you can't help me.
You have to be willing to stand there. And then
at some point. The funny thing is, I think you
end up realizing that you've heard the answer already. You
just didn't know how to listen to it, you know,
(11:16):
And the answer maybe wasn't like you were thinking, please
tell me go left, go right, go left, all right,
but really what you heard was, you know, that town
Richardsville sounds interesting, and you know Richardsville is left, and
then you and and then somebody you know pulls up
and they say, I'm heading richards Ville. Do you need
you know? Are you heading that way? And everything's been
(11:37):
saying Richardsville and you haven't known how to listen to it.
So I think one of the things that we come
to realize is all the answers are inside of us,
and we're so busy listening to all the static of
the world that we've forgotten how to listen. So the
moment of being lost is actually this really beautiful thing
because it's that moment where all the answers of the
(11:57):
world no longer satisfy us, because you know, looking back
on those times in your lives where you felt lost,
right when the answer came, it was in you. It
wasn't like, you know, you got some skywriting that said,
you know, now go to grad school. You know, it
(12:17):
was like the answer was in you and you were like, oh, yeah,
you know right, I always did love doing that, or
I was thought I'd end up, you know, doing something
like that, or wow, my friends have been saying that,
you know, it's there. Yeah, it's always been there, exactly
what happens almost every time I think, But it's it's
it seems like it's about finding that stillness, absolutely, and
(12:39):
we are not a society that's comfortable with being still
and being open to it, being completely open to it,
and we're terrified of it. We just like love to
pack on as much noise and outside voices as possible,
but rarely are we okay with being still with our
own right. Well, you know, now they're saying the number
one addiction more than opioids is technology, and so you know,
(13:03):
if you think about it, because I'm on the road.
So sometimes I really have this idea, like today, I'm
going to check Facebook and then I'm going to feel
connected to everybody. So there I go through scrolling through Facebook,
and I, you know, I think it'll take five minutes.
It takes fifteen. I don't even like Facebook, and I'm
even post on Facebook. And I get to the bottom of,
you know whatever, I've gotten to the bottom of, and
(13:23):
I think I feel so disconnected, right. I feel worse
than if I had just literally gone for a walk
with my dog met somebody out there, we talked about
dogs or flowers or birds or whatever. That would have
been genuine connection. I don't know that person. I might
never see that person again. But that's real connection. Not
(13:46):
wondering what my friend from high school is doing on
her ski trip in the Sierra Nevadas. That's not connection.
You know. I don't think anyone ever feel leaves scrolling
feeling connected. I don't I ever feel like that feels great,
that feels like a genuine connection. And I can tell
this from experience. I mean, I've been sitting in a
box and talking to strangers every weekend, and I've never
(14:08):
felt so connected to people in my life. Yes, exactly,
And that's part of the beauty of getting lost. When
you get lost, you have to ask for help, so
you have to talk to people you wouldn't normally talk to.
And all of a sudden, you realize all these people
that were told to be scared of, they're not scary.
There's something to talk about with everybody. I mean, yes,
there are people that we probably should listen to that
(14:30):
little inner wisdom like, yeah, maybe not that person, but
really the majority of people, we can always find common ground.
And when we find common ground with people that we're
told we're not supposed to find common ground with, all
of a sudden, we feel connected, right, and we feel
better opening up to someone we wouldn't have otherwise. Yeah,
that's beautiful because that's kind of the that's yeah, that's
(14:52):
literally our thesis of the show, and like it's what
we've come you know, it's really what we figured out
is that, you know, every weekend there does seem to
be a pattern to people's answers, and so many different
people walk into this booth and I speak to people
that I would have never gotten the chance otherwise, and
I just kind of realized that man we are way
more similar than we are different, And I think that's
(15:13):
so important right now because we're really that's like tearing
us apart um. So it's really beautiful and it brings
us hope. We see that every weekend. Well, you know,
that's one of the beauties of living on the road.
First of all, I travel with this adorable, fluffy white dog,
so she's like my love mayor right of the world.
Everybody nobody looks at me and was like, oh, what
a cute little dog. And then you're having a conversation.
(15:34):
Nobody cares because you're you love dogs, right. But even
one time I almost ran out of gas when I
got it's a gas with a gas station ended up
being like two miles in the middle of nowhere in
like South Carolina, and I pull in to get gas
like on fumes and there I am with my new
Mexico plates and my roof box and my dog, and
(15:55):
I look around and everybody the median age what they're
all men. They're all in pick up trucks with shotgun racks,
and you know, they range from like forty to sixty.
And in that little moment, that voice in my head said, oh,
be aware, of your surroundings. And I thought, okay, well
that's common sense, especially as a woman, you should be
aware of your surroundings. And then the next voice was,
but don't be afraid. And so I'm filling up the
(16:19):
tank and I see this guy and we're in South
Carolina with a Green Bay Packers T shirt on. I'm
a big sports fan, and I just couldn't help myself.
I'm like, hey, what are you doing down here? A
Green Bay Packers? I mean, you know, it just seems
little ridiculous, right, you know. And he looked at me
and he and it was like and he walks over,
and I'm now at this point in the car and
he puts his arm his hand on my arm, you know,
(16:43):
and I'm like, and he goes, what do you say?
And I said, green Bay Packers? You know, do you
have like many friends down here? What are you doing
down here? He's like, I know, right, he said, well,
I love my Packers. I'm not even from Wisconsin. And
he goes on and on and on about the Packers
and then um, he said, well, who are you we
do a fan of? I said, I'm a Broncos. Oh
the Broncos. Peyton you know, we start talking and then
(17:04):
he calls the other guys over, so it's in to
me and the toothless shotgun guys, you know, and we're
all talking football. There's always something we have in common.
And they didn't see anything, you know, they didn't see
like someone with short hair and tattoos driving a car
with new Mexico plates with a fluffy white dog, who like,
what the heck is she doing here? They saw, Oh,
(17:25):
my god, Green Bay Packers and football and Broncos and
we love Peyton and all of a sudden, there's that
common ground, and there is always common ground, and we're
taught the opposite. We're taught to look for what to
be afraid of instead of to find what we have
in common. And you're right, there is way more that
we have in common. We all get up in the
(17:46):
morning and think oh or wow, or you know, we
all go to bed at night praying about something we
all have lost and gained and you know, fallen in
love and fallen out of love and worried about how
we're gonna pay every single person on this point in
the hands. And we're taught to find the differences and
that's crazy. Yeah, And it's harmful. Harmful, Yeah, and it
(18:08):
closes you off from beautiful experiences like that. I think
those are just amazing. And also being on the road,
I think we can all we all look back at
those fun experiences. It's just you know, letting ourselves open
up to them. It's just amazing. Yeah. We'll be right
back with more from Victoria after the break. M h
m hm hm. Are there any other beautiful experiences from
(18:36):
being lost that come to mind? Yeah? You know, I
have a practice. I drive the back roads, and I
do it on purpose because it's all well and good
to talk about. Well there's us and them and people.
You know, we're so different from them, and they're so
different from us or whoever they and we are, right,
But when you drive the back roads, you really look
(18:57):
at how a lot of people who feel this enfranchised
in this country live, because this is an urban culture.
Everything you see on TV is about urban lifestyles, and
these are people who have you know, lived for generations
or choosing to live way. I mean, I drive the
back back roads, right, and so when I first started
(19:18):
to drive them, I would get lost, and eventually at
some point I would get so lost that I would
get panicked, and I would really begin to look at
that panic, like, what are you scared of that you're
going to have to go knock on someone's door and
ask for help. But what I really began to realize
was that everybody I ran into on the back roads,
(19:39):
I've lived in rural places, and one of the things
when you live in rural places, especially if you live
in mountain roads, which I've lived on, you always wave
at everybody when you pass them. And so one of
the things I noticed was that in my fear, I'd
be clenched so tight that I wouldn't behave like I
normally would, you know. And but if I remember to
(20:00):
just be present and wave, I would see all the
help all around me. And at one point I was
taking this photograph it's still one of my favorite photographs
I photographed on the road, and I'm standing in the
middle of the road and I'm waiting for the cars
to pass to get this shot, and every single car
stopped and asked me if I needed help, no matter,
and and I never felt scared, I never felt harassed.
(20:22):
I felt like everybody genuinely wanted to make sure I
was okay. On the same road trip. So it was
this reminder that help is all around, you know, it's
always there. So on the same road trip um I
was in driving from Colorado to Texas and the sky
started to get like super super dark, and I've gotten
(20:42):
stuck in the Texas Panhandle and ice storms and lightning storms,
and I started to get worried because it was tornado season,
and I started to get that totally anxious feeling. And
I'm driving along and I checked the weather and it
shows there's major weather coming my way. And I'm thinking,
what an idiot you should and taking the back roads.
Who cares about those photographs and those nice people you
(21:03):
talked to about help? You should have stayed on that,
you know, And I'm like, no, you do this as
a practice. What does a practice mean? A practice means
you have to be present right where you are. So
I'm driving on this back road and all of a sudden,
I swear to you. You know, we all have this thing,
especially those of us who are raised Christian, where we think,
like when we're really lost, like please God give me
a burning bush, you know. So I'm driving along like thinking,
(21:27):
am I crazy? What am I doing? What am I doing?
And then all the questions come in right, and I
swear to God, this red stream of light, like something
out of you know, like a sci fi movie, about
ten miles ahead of me, beams straight down like one
stream of bright red light. And it was there for
(21:47):
the whole ten miles that I drove. And I'm looking
at this thing, and I'm trying to take pictures and
I'm like, oh my god. And right after it disappeared,
it started to pour like that kind of torrential. You
can't gully washer, you can't see anything. And I have
this big smile on my face because I realized the
whole day was my burning bush. That every time, like
(22:10):
I thought, oh my god, I'm in the middle of nowhere.
If something happened, what would I do. Everybody came and
talked to me and asked me if I needed help.
And then when I thought, god, I'm crazy for taking
these back roads. I could have already been at the hotel,
you know, in on a highway, there's my burning bush moment.
And what it what it really taught me was whenever
we're led to get lost, we're going to be bombarded
(22:32):
with voices telling us this is not safe, this is
not cool, and exactly the opposite happens. If we can
stick with it, the people, the situations, the messages from
the universe will come and they will say to us,
you know, you're in exactly the right place and you
are safe. And the next day when I got to
my job, you know, it had taken me a lot
(22:52):
longer because driving the back roads takes longer. And my
um my client. I got there and my client was like, wow,
you seems so energized. You worked all weekend in Colorado
and then you just drove two days. And I'm like, yeah,
because when you really show up to your own heart,
the world shows up to you. And we're not taught that.
(23:14):
We are not taught that. We're like, find the plans,
stick to it. It's like, you know what the plan is,
not what we think it is. That's beautiful. I know,
thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, it was.
I'll never forget it. I have a little crappy cell
phone picture and you can see it, but it was,
you know, the little stream of light, but it's nothing
(23:35):
like I mean, it really was like, Okay, that'll be
a burning bush, I think, yeah, but it's got to
be moments like that that just get burned into your
mind if you didn't capture them in a photograph, and
the kind of ones that reminds you to be present. Yes, no,
we're just so not taught how to be present, and
(23:57):
and technology addiction is make in a million times worse.
I was raised as a kid to not watch a
lot of TV, even though my dad was an actor,
and so consequently, in my mind, like, because I don't
have a home, I can go months without turning on
a television, and but if I go to a restaurant
where there's a TV on, I'm like as a zomb
(24:20):
I can barely converse with the people I'm with and
it's mes merrick, you know, And I think, and I
realized the little screen is like that too. I'll be
driving and I'll be like on a seven hour drive
and this little voice in my head said, oh, you
better check the thing. It's like, really, what what on
earth could be happening that is so important that you
have to check it? And then the big piece of
advice I have to say is if something if you
(24:43):
wake up in the middle of the night and you
think check your phone, don't because nothing ever good will
happen at two in the morning on your phone. You
will not get an email telling you you've one publishing
clearing house. You will not find the love of your
life on match dot com. Nothing good will come of
checking anything at two in the morning, you know, and
(25:04):
we think, oh, it's our little babysitter, and it makes
everything worse. You know. That's another time to really be
willing to get lost, to get lost in the fear
of two in the morning, and begin to train yourself
to realize that all of those voices in our heads.
You know, that's the big question, like what is the
thing that scares you it to in the morning? Everything
scares you it too in the morning, you know, And
so being willing to really sit with that and find
(25:25):
a way to start to lose those voices that are
so scary and realize that we have that piece inside
of us. We're not trying to do that, you know.
We're trying to just keep busy and keep going. Yeah, definitely,
And just like you said, we're not trained to do
these things, and we're trained to have a plan. Um,
did you have any criticism or friends and family being
(25:48):
like what are you doing? Like what you Thank God?
My parents aren't alive, You're veering from your plan. Yeah,
you know. I think the thing is that my closest
friends knew that I was unhappy. You know. They kept
looking at my life and people would look at it
from the outside and go, Wow, you're so successful and
(26:08):
this is going so well. I never felt that. I
never felt successful, And I think they knew that I
was being called to something that wasn't going to have
like a job description. Oh you know, it's going to
be out there. I have to go. I knew that
I had to kind of go in search, and I'm
still searching. You know. The book is is out, and
(26:29):
I'm doing this back roads book tour and I'm doing
talks all over the place. But even in all of that,
i still feel like there's a way I need to
help other people be able to step into doing that.
And I'm still exploring the best because technology, unfortunately is
the means to reach the most people. You can't actually,
(26:51):
I mean, I am on the road all the time,
but even so, technology reaches more people. But I want
to find a way of doing it that's in a
holistic way, not in a way of just here's one
more toolkit that you add into your tool kit that
you add into your planning and so as I'm really
thinking about that, which is happening by talking to people,
because people tell you what they need, people tell you
(27:11):
what's missing, people ask you the questions like I was
at dinner with someone last night. He said, do you
ever feel fear? I was like, all the time, are
you kidding? And then he proceeded to share his fears
and we talked about fear, and so yeah, I got
a lot of the funniest thing that happens to me
is I'll say to people I'm intentionally homeless, and they're like, wow,
(27:34):
so where do you live. I'm like, no, home less
because people can't really process it, and then there's usually
like one of three responses. One is oh my god,
I'm so jealous. That's the smallest number, but it's like
a pipe dream for people. The majority of people are like,
I could never do that, and then the third group
(27:59):
is actually literally who cannot even process it, which shows
that everything we do in our society is based around
this idea of home. And some people are nomads, you know,
whole cultures are nomadic, but we're not built to be nomadic.
In fact, there's whole things you can't do in our society,
like insurance. You know, insurance is built around an idea
(28:20):
of a domicile. You know, there's no there's whole sectors
of our society that aren't built for people who choose
to live differently, whatever that difference is. Yeah, definitely, And
and it's crazy because by people saying I can't even imagine,
that proves right that people can't imagine, and they won't
force themselves or like open themselves up to even the idea. So,
(28:44):
oh my gosh, we have a little more with Victoria
in just a moment. We'll be right back. M m m.
What is your definition your personal definition of home? Mm hmmm.
So that's been a big thing that I learned, right
(29:05):
because home was so important to my parents. Uh, we
moved a lot, but the idea of home was this
place where you could shut the door and shut especially
if you were famous, you could shut the world out
and be yourself. It was also a place that absolutely
reflected who you were to anyone who came in the door.
(29:27):
And I've made my living as a designer for years
and that's my job. My job is for somebody to
explain in words and some visuals who they are and
for me to help them create a space that reflects
who they are. Right. So that was my idea of
what home was. It was a sanctuary, and it was
a place that reflected who I was to anyone who
walked in the door and back to myself as well.
(29:48):
So to lose all of that right to have no
door you can shut and to have sort of nothing
that expresses that, I was like, whoa, you know, what
is home? And what I realized was that the more
we lose our hearts, the more we have a need
for something concrete. And the more I found my heart again,
(30:09):
the more I realized all the places I could feel
at home. The other day, I was my editor from
my book happens to live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and so
I stayed with her. That's where I was born. Really yeah,
it's really. It was really pretty day and I was
staying in the nice neighborhood where she lives, and we
she has a dog and I have a dog, and
so we took this long walk and everything was blooming.
(30:29):
It was beautiful, and I kept hearing this voice in
my head saying, I'm so happy I'm so happy. And
happy didn't mean I wanted to immediately, like buy a
house in that neighborhood. Happy didn't mean like Knoxville is
now number one on my list of places I want
to live. I was happy because I was walking having
a wonderful conversation with somebody that I enjoy conversing with.
(30:52):
Because you work on a book so intensely with someone
right you, you get to know them really well. I
was walking looking at nature. Our dogs were having the
best time, and I was fully present right where I
was in my heart, and I thought I read this
blog called Daily Practice of Joy, and the definition of
joy I like best is the pure and simple delight
(31:14):
in being alive, delight in being alive, And for me,
that's what home is. When I'm in my heart filled
with joy, I feel this delight in being alive, which
automatically connects me to the environment and to the animals
and to other people, and then I'm home wherever I am,
which is so not me. When I first started staying
(31:36):
at other people's houses, I was like, did they clean
their toilets? Wow? I wouldn't use that hand soape, you know.
I was like the designer in me or the person
I was like, I missed my towels, you know, because
there's things that feel like safe, right, and I'm like,
oh my god, it's so nice to be in someone's
space and feel their sense of home and how wonderful
(31:56):
is this and how fortunate am I to be here? Yeah?
I love that it's home is um can be people.
Home can be a moment. M. Yeah, that's that's a
kind of a liberating way of thinking about it. It's
a really liberating way of thinking about it. And I
have to change it up all the time because I
(32:17):
tend to be a loner, but when you live on
the road three sixty five days a year, being a
loner actually can turn into lonely. And so I actually
have to recognize that that need to have my own space,
or that enjoyment of my own space that's changing for
me because I don't have a home, so sometimes to
(32:38):
be in my own space, I'm in a strangers space,
and it's actually like an airbnb or a hotel that
someone's put me up in. So when I now, I
make a point of staying with friends for longer stretches
of time, and then I find that I get to
know their neighborhoods, and I get to know, like I
like that that particular market, and I like that particular
place to go get a smoothie. And then I realized, like, oh,
(33:00):
I have these little homes all over and it's really fun.
And I think, like, we never go out of our
way to stay with our friends too. I feel like
it's even if you don't live on the road and
you visit somewhere you have a friend who lives there,
but you just feel so um. You feel like it's
an inconvenience and you feel uncomfortable, and you think, oh,
I'll just get a hotel. But every time you stay
(33:22):
with a friend, you just have this amazing Usually you
have this amazing experience that opens you up to where
they live in their neighborhood and why it's important to them,
and then you grow closer. It's so fascinating that we
run away from that experience exactly my mother, we never
we never even stayed with family members. We were always
just like the two of us. And I was brought
up that way. And now you know, I love it.
(33:44):
I really look forward to it, and I find myself
sort of inviting myself back and I hear it coming
out and I was like, oh, I'd love to come back.
Oh is that okay to say? But for most people
it really is. People love sharing, you know there especially
if you know you learn how to be a decent
house guest. Yes, always make breakfast for people. That's always
have a big question, the big question. I have a
(34:07):
big question, Um, what what would you tell someone who
maybe is feeling lost in their heart and their soul?
So the key for me to really finding a good
way of being lost, because there is that sense of
being lost of literally like you're bouncing off the walls
(34:28):
and you're you know, the voices are reverberating inside your
head and you have no way of stilling them. I
cannot over emphasize enough the need to develop a practice.
And for me, my practice was about finding what I've
come to call my magic word. What I realized was
(34:48):
the word joy. That's where I write this blog called
Daily Practice of Joy. The word joy for me is
this word that always gets me out of my head.
Joy is not a cerebral thing. Joy is not a
head trip. It's on an idea. Joy always gets me
out of my head and into my heart the moment
I'm in my heart, I cannot help but connect with
people around me, and then I care about the world
(35:10):
and then it's like it sort of makes the circle
come around full. And so joy is like my reset button.
Joys like my litmus test of whether I should do something.
Joys my sweet spot for sure, And so finding what
that was and it's not joy for everybody. I've begun
asking people, and people have thrown out all kinds of
different words, surrender, balance, connection, savor, um aw. You know,
(35:39):
people have different qualities. That is that thing that gets
them out of their head and into their heart. Finding
that quality within yourself that's like that override button. But
then the kicker is developing a practice of it that
you do every single day, because if you don't do that,
it's just easy just are rattling around in your head.
(36:01):
And when you're lost, you know, when you're feeling really
crappy about everything, it's like all you can hear is
what's wrong. So finding a practice that works for you.
So for some people, gratitude is the word, and gratitude
making a list every single day of what you're grateful
for is like that thing that kicks you out of
(36:22):
that feeling. But having a practice isn't about having a
practice that gives you a specific outcome. It's about having
a practice that keeps you in your heart, and the
moment you're in your heart that actually becoming lost is
a good thing. You realize it's it's our fear of
getting lost is our head doesn't have the answer. The
(36:44):
joy of getting lost is realizing our head doesn't have
the answer, and but that our heart always does, and
that when we connect with other people's hearts, their hearts
always do, and our hearts together do. It's like, you
know what you said about talking to people. Here we
are are being bombarded with all these reasons to be
scared of each other, and you start talking to people
and they start talking to you, and we realize how
(37:06):
much we crave that heart connection and how much we
all have in common. Right, So the thing is you
have a practice of that. Now every single weekend you
go talk to people, Which now means that during the
week talking to people that you might not talk to
otherwise is starting to become a practice in your life.
You know in a way that probably when you graduated
(37:27):
from high school, it wasn't you had your friends you
talk to them, they were the safe people. Now, I
mean for me, I go to horror conventions all the time.
I don't like being scared. I don't understand why anyone
would want to be scared. But I love horror fans.
My dad made horror movies, right, and so now when
I see people that I know that a lot of
the world is scared of, like there Spiger and they
have tattoos and their goths and they're pierced and all
(37:50):
of these things, I immediately look at them and go,
oh my god. I know they're going to be totally
sweet and we're gonna have a great conversation the moment
we start and I'll go over and they'll sort of
look at me like what do you want. I'll be like, hey,
so blah blah blah, you know, and we end up
having the sweet conversation. I still don't want to be
scared in a movie, you know, and they want to
tell me all the reasons it's awesome to be scared.
But there's always this common ground, right, because we're kindred spirits,
(38:13):
and usually horror fans felt like outsiders. I felt like
an outsider, just a different kind of outsider. So I
think the real thing is developing these practices, whatever they are,
that when push comes to shove in those terrifying moments
of your life, you make yourself do them because it's
the voices in your head that will scree up every
single time. And whatever the practice is that can get
(38:34):
you out of your head, that'll save your life. That's amazing. Yeah.
I love the word practice because practice is eternal. You
can't master and it's good master them because you're always learning. Yeah,
it's not really about mastering, it's about every day showing up. Yeah.
And I think that's we struggle with that too. I
(38:55):
think every day it's like you try to pick up
a practice or something that makes you feel better, and
they feel like you should get better at it or
you should be a master of it. But just to
let yourself learn and it be part of your daily
life so way more rewarding and empowering. Yeah. And the
other thing is to learn from other people. I went
to a uh AN event or I was talking about
(39:17):
joy actually was my event and um, and somebody said, oh,
joy is my word too. And every year I make
a list of ten joy practices and he said, usually
it's interesting. I've been doing this for twenty years, Like
four of them say the same and six of them
change every every year. And I was like, thank you
for saying that, because I realized I'd gotten in a rut.
(39:40):
I was like, practice, so I'm having my joy practice,
you know, And and I was doing my joy practices
and they weren't bringing me joy. So then I was like, oh,
all right. You know, practice isn't about doing the same thing.
It's the quality of practice. And the quality of practice
is about anything that just short circuits those, you know,
the chattering monkeys in our heads. We hope you enjoyed
(40:08):
hearing more from Victoria Price. Her book is called The
Way of Being Lost, and it's a great read. We'll
be back with another regularly scheduled episode, but until then,
see you in the question Booth.
The Question Booth News
Hosts And Creators
Dylan Fagan
Kathleen Quillian
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