If you’re looking for the “everything is fine” version of me, you might want to check the archives from about three fiscal years ago.

Currently, that version of Chris is unavailable, likely hiding under a pile of boxes or maybe trying to find a corner of the world where the cost of a pint of berries doesn’t require a credit check.

The world is a friggin’ mess.

Our country feels like it’s being held together by frayed twine and collective cognitive dissonance.

The simple act of existing has become an expensive hobby that none of us actually signed up for.

And on top of the global catastrophe du jour, my personal life has decided to lean into the chaos with the enthusiasm of a toddler who just discovered finger paint.

First of all, I’m moving.

If you’ve ever moved, you know it’s less of a life transition and more of a slow-motion identity crisis where you’re forced to confront every half-finished project and “sentimental” piece of junk you’ve carried since the nineties.

Finding an affordable rental is like looking for a needle in a haystack these days, and when I do find one, there are at least three dozen other people all vying for the same unit. It’s more nerve wracking than applying for college. It’s practically a full time job, and it’s exhausting.

If any of my local friends know of an affordable unit for a single person and her service dog, hit me up….

Simultaneously, my heart is currently located about 1,500 miles northeast of here.

I have been missing my sister an unreasonable, borderline obsessive amount. She is living in Newfoundland—the place I call the home of my soul—and the math just isn’t mathing. I can’t afford to get there to visit her this year. These days, the distance feels less like a geographical gap and more like a physical weight on my chest.

Then there is the internal landscape of my squirrel-brain.

On top of raging ADHD, I live with generalized anxiety and PTSD.

Usually, we have a working agreement: I do the therapy and the self-care, and they stay in their designated lanes. But lately, my brain has decided to mutiny and my fight-or-flight response has decided to take the wheel. My nervous system is ringing like a fire alarm in an empty building, and to top it off, my long-time therapist—the person who knows where all my mental bodies are buried—has decided to peace out and leave the country.

She’s smarter, and richer, than me.

So, I’m doing the only sensible things I know how to do.

I’m going to the doctor tomorrow to talk about pharmaceutical intervention for the physical symptoms. There is no prize for suffering through a racing heart and a cortisol-soaked brain when science has provided us with help. Better living through pharmaceuticals, right? I’m starting the search for a new therapist, which feels a bit like starting to date again after a twenty-year marriage, but here we are.

And I’m Hope Questing.

Hope Questing is a term I’ve come across lately, and it’s a portmanteau of sorts…..

It’s a great name for the very intentional baby of the opposite of doom scrolling, and my natural penchant for side quests.

It’s the act of looking for something—anything—to watch, hear, or do that brings joy, happiness, or a sense of connection.

It is the opposite of the passive descent into the digital abyss.

It’s an active, sometimes aggressive, hunt for the light.

Part of this quest has involved learning to crochet.

Now, I’m already the field producer for the Homeless Memorial Blanket Project, which is a massive undertaking for the soul and the brain. But apparently, just focusing on it in December isn’t enough for my squirrel brain.

My spirit needed to be in the weeds of it.

Crochet is, quite literally, meditative.

You have to be in the moment.

You have to count.

If I lose track of my double crochet stitches, the whole thing falls apart.

It’s a way to keep my brain from crashing out by tethering it to the rhythmic, physical reality of yarn and hook.

I am counting stitches because I cannot count the problems of the world right now.

Then, a few days ago, my friend Diane Davis sent me a song. It’s called “Already Dancing” by Alan Doyle, and it hit me with the force of a North Atlantic gale. There’s a line in there that says:

“The roof might be leaking and the floor might be creaking

And the walls might be thin as a veil

But we’ve got a rhythm and a reason to give ‘em

A hell of a song and a tale”

It spoke so clearly to the exact frequency of my struggle.

We spend so much time waiting for the storm to pass, for the economy to stabilize, for the move to be over, for the anxiety to quiet down. But the song reminds us that we don’t wait for the music to be perfect to start moving.

“So don’t wait for the rain to stop

Don’t wait for the wind to go down

Don’t wait for the sun to come up

Over the edge of the town”

My big Hope Quest to date was a bit of a long shot.

I went to Alan Doyle’s website, half-expecting to see that he was part of the general Canadian boycott of the US. But there it was: one single show in Pennsylvania next month, only two hours away.

I checked the tickets.

There were exactly six left.

Could I afford it? Strictly speaking, no.

My budget is currently a work of fiction. But I bought the ticket anyway.

I’ll eat more beans and rice; I’ll frame it as a ‘pantry challenge’.

I’ll adjust the spreadsheet until the numbers stop screaming.

Because I know that for two hours, sitting in the very back row of that theater, my spirit will be in Newfoundland. I will be with the people I love, even if they aren’t in the seat next to me.

I will be feeding a part of myself that cannot be nourished by logic or practical financial planning.

We are already dancing, even if our knees are shaking and the floor is uneven. We are finding the rhythm in the counting of stitches and the two-hour-each-way drive to a concert we can’t technically afford. We are looking for the hope that exists not after the mess is cleaned up, but right in the middle of the wreckage.

I’m still struggling.

I’m still anxious.

I’m still looking for a new place to live.

But I’m also questing.

And next month, from the back row, I’ll be dancing.