In search of disconnection

Candid of me taking a breather on a hike back in my home state of Hawai’i

One of the most difficult aspects of adjusting to my current lifestyle of SoCal living and industry work with which I’ve had to contend is the disconnect people here have between where and how they live. Even though this is one of the most fertile and productive regions in all of North America, it seems to me that people here tend to live completely separately from their environments. This could be in part due to the shift toward individualism among Americans recently, but I’ve found that it also has to do with the lifestyles many people here wish to lead.

Community(?)

I first came here to SoCal in 2012 for college at UCI, and obviously living at a university as a first year provided everyone with ample amounts of community… and insanity… but like most Americans, that all seemed to disappear after graduation. Living around my university’s town and remaining an active participant in the OC Tricking Community did give me more chances to retain connections with my own and successive generations, but as I moved into the industry and towards a professional lifestyle, that slowly began to fade. By the time I was self sustaining off of my various forms of work, my “community” had been reduced to just my own small circle of friends who didn’t end up moving home after college. At the same time, the vast majority of my social interations were along the lines of “networking” and industry events which get old fast, and so, I ended up doubling down on my training to the point where practice was my only real release on a weekly basis.

As you can probably imagine, this is a pretty terrible way to be. My relationships were strained, my body was breaking down, and my mind was probably not far behind. After much deliberation, advice, therapy, etc. I came to the realization that I’d lost something that was once critical to my life since I was a kid: disconnection.

not how you’d think

When I was growing up in Maui, much of the core values imparted on all youth had to do with one’s responsibility to the people and the land, and with so much of the land and its history all around us, many of those values stuck with us for life. Fast-forward some years and I’m in the bay; not a ton of natural connections, but still a very strong sense of community in schools, neighborhoods, cultural collections, and the arts. It was not an easy adjustment, but still easy enough to connect the dots and find my way after some years. Skip ahead some more, and I’m in SoCal; there is almost zero connection with the land, no inter-city or even neighborhood relations [outside of college], and just no real third spaces to speak of. There are, of course, exceptions; I’ve seen block parties in Santa Ana, sideshows in South Central, and… let’s call them “rallies” in Anaheim & Huntington, so there are some small pockets of connection.

So why is it disconnection for which I claim to yearn? Simple, I wish to disconnect from that one cannot see, in which SoCal & the industry happen to be saturated: the opportunitism. At least that’s my word for it, I’ve also heard it called: the SoCal “fakeness”, the OC attitude, going Hollywood, seeking stardom, and many other phrases for that thing we all know, but can never truly seem to see. I hate it. It’s exhausting to even deal with people who are so facetious, let alone to try and work/socialize amongst them on a regular basis, and that is what I wish to disconnect from.

Now one might think, “why not just hang out with your people more?” which is absolutely a valid question, and I’ll answer it with this anecdote: when you lay down with dogs, you may get up with fleas. I did rely a lot more heavily upon my friends when I first started out being a Hollywood man, but I also noticed that I would “bring work home with me” in the way that I would vent about all of the stupid stuff I had to deal with, and that guilt was beginning to eat at me. Never would I want to be the angry man in anyone’s home; something had to change.

a buffer zone

There’s a much longer, boring, and more emotional story full of trials and many errors to the journey of how I landed at this conclusion, but I’m just gonna give the broad strokes here.

Once per week [if work schedule permitted], I would venture out away from people to be on my own and cleanse my perspective on the world. Ideally, this would be something in nature that wasn’t super physical or constructive towards my career, thus negating two of the most common occurences in my daily activities outside of work: networking and training. When I had a lot of time, I would go out to a long hike or spend the day diving in the ocean. When I had just a little bit of time, I would garden or go do yoga out in a field or something. When I didn’t have any time, I would pick a late night to just go for a long bike ride, light dance session, or rooftopping to get away from it all if only for a short while. Additionally, a couple times per year, I would get out of town for a while and enjoy the world away from the bubble within a bubble within a bubble that was SoCal industy life.

Activities didn’t matter nearly as much as adhering to the themes of distance, perspective, and space within the activites themselves. Rooftopping and hiking allow me to physically reach up and out of the planes in which most of our lives happen, the silence, solitude, and high perspective serve to remind me of how small all of us really are, and that the world is a symphony of moving parts. Diving is basically visiting an alien world where all the rules are different, and, given the perspective, I basically gain the ability to fly. Gardening and yoga are very different, but both have to do with establishing and clearing paths for energy to find its way to where is belongs, allowing me to appreciate the hidden systems of the world. Lastly, late night rides and light dance sessions do kinda push it with the whole “non-phyical” and “in nature” requirements, but as a last resort, they at least grant me my own space since nobody else is around to deal with.

the results?

While these ventures do take away some of the time I’d normally use for work or being with my friends, they do allow me to recenter myself and recharge the parts of me that are neglected in this bizarre machiavellian rat race that is living here and working in this industry. Restoring myself to the whole I had once been has allowed me to take better care of myself and others both physically and spiritually, as well as giving me a deeper reservoir of self to draw upon for my creative endeavours. Incedentally, I’ve also rediscovered a lot of former passions and appreciations that I hadn’t even realized had been gone, such as dearly I love nature.

All of this isn’t to say that I’ve “fixed” everything about myself and found the secrets to a perfect life, but by disconnecting in the ways that I have, I believe I’ve gotten a little closer to having a fuller life eperience. I’m a work in progress, as are we all, and everyday is an opportunity to do a little better in some small facet, and thus, as a whole. The last thing I’ll say is that record keeping has been a crucial part of this journey (i.e. journals & this blog), and I highly recommend that if you’re also trying to better yourself.

Some other disconnects ↑