What Will Your Life Look Like?

Tomorrow marks 3 months.

Three months here, sharing a zip code with Saguaros.

“So how is Phoenix?” a friend asked me over the phone as I sat on my balcony beneath glowing string lights, a pour of raspberry wine in my hand. The sun was setting, painting the eastern mountains with rosy swipes of redemption.

How has Phoenix been these last three months?

Well, I’ve already noticed three cracks in my windshield from flying rocks on the freeway. My living expenses are more than triple what I paid in Nashville. (Ask me what I pay in rent for a 900-square foot 1-bedroom apartment, I dare you.)

Naturally, the move coincides with December and January — typically my slowest months in business. My bank statements are the punchline of a joke.

I’ve not found classic white queso — that gooey bowl of cheese divinity — at any of the Mexican restaurants I’ve visited so far. I have, however, found some excellent margaritas, but none that match the $14.99 Sunday - Tuesday pitcher specials from Cinco de Mayo West Nashville.

Even so, the desert has spun its blue-sky spell over me.

Sunrises wake up the city with ethereal colors not found in any Pantone selection, and sunsets demand your attention every evening, like a royal commanding alms.

When a rainshower rolls through, you’re required by law to throw open your windows and let the scent permeate every cranny in your home. There is literally nothing — and I do mean NOTHING — that smells sweeter than the Sonoran desert after a good soak. Trust me on this one.

I hike often. I’m not sure there is a sound any more sacred than the crunch of sand beneath your boots. Spotted cactus wrens call to one another from their perches atop chollas, and quail waddle among the squat brittlebush. The skies are consistently a shatter-your-heart blue and the scent of the creosote bush is like inhaling earth itself. From slope or summit, you can see just about the whole world in all directions; it’s enough to break your heart as wide open as the view itself.

My words — and maybe my life — are becoming one long love letter to the desert.

Because the desert is doing something to me.

“AZ Ally is so chill,” I joke to friends. Because in reality, there are major areas of my life that are as messy as spools of unraveled yarn — parts of life where I face hard, how-will-this-resolve? challenges: work, finances, relationships, health.

Life is not perfect. And yet, it is so good.

This, my friends, is the opposite of my normal response. My normal reaction is pure PANIC, my body responding with a knot wound within the center of myself. Fight-or-flight cortisol levels have been my baseline for as long as I can remember. No wonder I have autoimmune issues — my body doesn’t know how to relax already.

But I’ve noticed a surprising shift within myself since my Phoenix arrival three months ago. A shift that allows me to say — and mean — “I am happy,” even when so many parts of my life remain unravelled.

“Okay, Ally, WE GET IT. You love the desert,” you may be saying, your foot tapping with impatience. “What’s your POINT?!”

Forgive my swooning. I have been sussing out how to wrap up this particular desert dispatch; I’ve gone through at least three different conclusions — all relevant, all true, but none that feel like the right way to tie this together.

So I’m going to end this essay simply.

Moving here three months ago was the best decision I’ve ever made. And yet so many times, I almost didn’t do it. It was scary. It was hard. I like neither hard nor scary things.

But I wonder…

What would my life look like now had I not done the scary, hard thing?

What will your life look like if you don’t do the scary, hard thing?

---

---