Murderous lobsters. fro-frazzling tornadoes. Nerve-rending glitter bombs. Growing up the queer progeny of two natural scientists in small-town Alabama was like competing in one long rendition of The Hunger Games. But it was nothing compared to growing into the archaeologist I’d always dreamed of becoming, only to leave that sepia-tinged career behind—in a cloud of glitter on a military base—as I authored my cross-country love story with the boy next door.
A polite southern fish flopping out of water onto California’s heated desert, I cobbled together a new career and a new marriage in Los Angeles. But happily ever after didn’t quite pan out. Instead, I found myself single and broke in Seattle, with my faithful Crayhound JoJo (Chihuahua-Italian Greyhound) by my side.
Over the subsequent two years, whilst renovating Gay Gardens—my rotting hillside rental in West Seattle—I fleshed out the shell of the person I’d become.
But ye olde compounding push factors Millennials know all too well—soaring rent, little to no savings, and eco anxiety (along with the Seattle Freeze’s perpetual antisocial chill)—forced me to reassess what type of life I wanted, and what I could feasibly bring to fruition.
So, early in 2019, I sold almost everything I had (including pretty much everything in the photo above), bought a battered 1977 Class C Chevy Beaver Motorcoach, quit my job, and moved to New Mexico with my pup to shape a smaller, simpler, greener life in the desert.
And then came 2020—a protracted culmination of racial injustice, gross hyper-capitalism, environmental degradation, and a humxn-shaped health disaster. Job-less, I crafted a plan to return to Alabama and carve out a tiny life back where it all began. That didn’t quite pan out. So, mid-pandemic, I left my RV parked and returned to New Mexico to start again.
And now, I’m making it all up as I go—and in the process, am trying to help shape a more equitable world.
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The semantic seeds for YBM were sown early on, in the first journal I started when I was eight—its entries detailing the horrors of grade school; wearing sequined costumes while admiring Zach Morris’s chiseled jawline; and returning home from a football game I was forced to attend to find my beloved hamster dead. (Not that I’m bitter.)
Ever the southerner, I find stories in everything I do, which drives me to record seemingly insignificant, mundane moments—after which I often recognize the meaning locked inside daily minutiae.
And when words fail, art, design, and creative, eco-friendly tiny living projects help remind me that imperfection, in all its forms, is wildly underrated.
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