Pixie in Paradise

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August 14, 2023

“Has the tiny ho landed yet?”

Yes, Nick, the tiny ho has landed.

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If you didn’t read the very first post on this blog, you won’t understand that short and ridiculous conversation, but basically it was one of my sassy friends messaging me last August the day I moved to Belize. He was asking if I’d made it to Central America yet. It was August 14th, one year ago today, that I stepped onto a tiny Belizean island, moving to Caye Caulker.

To say a lot has happened in this last year is a grossly wild understatement. What a wonderful, beautiful, gut-wrenching, joyful and absolutely terrifying 12 months it has been. And we ain’t done folks.

When I arrived back to the mainland US in April I knew immediately I couldn’t stay. This was not my home, my heart was no longer there. To be honest, I’m  pretty sure it never has been. But, without a half-dead sugar daddy leaving me his millions or buying a winning lottery ticket, I did need to find a way to bring more money in to fund my wanderlust. That required temporarily returning to the country whose passport I travel on (thanks for that), to regroup before moving on. It was never a question of if I’d take off again, it was a question of when. 

The answer is, now. I’m taking off now, and semi-permanently, soon. I say semi-permanently because I feel in my gut that I am not destined to live on an island for extended periods of time. That is not for the weak. Living on a tropical island is a little scary: you lose power a lot, and resources are expensive and hard to come by at times. It’s very hard to get items you take for granted in the US shipped outside of the mainland. Even getting food resources to an island takes a lot of logistics not required when landlocked. That also means it’s hard to move stuff off of the island – like garbage! You’re always a sitting duck, not knowing if the next rain storm that comes in will turn into a hurricane and leave you homeless – or dead. This is the more dramatic side of living in paradise, but it does have to be considered once in a while.

It’s all worth it to me because it means I will be back in the Caribbean again. For a long while now my dream has been to live in a beautiful, tropical place near the ocean, where I can really use the little Spanish language I have and become more fluent. I want to create a life for myself in such a place. And I did, in Costa Rica, a five-minute walk from the Caribbean Sea.

While I’m still mourning the loss of that life and having to say goodbye to it, I still have a few loved ones there that keep me connected and grounded to that beloved place. I think about the Limón province and Puerto Viejo, the town I Iived outside of, numerous times every single day. I was on a conference call – video conference – last week, and I had some sort of flashback. My mind wandered to Belize and the sights and sounds I remembered there. I swear I wasn’t on any hallucinatory drugs at the time – just coffee – but it felt like my mind was trying to go back and show me something. I don’t know what it was and luckily this waking dream state didn’t last long because I was in an important meeting for work! Work has been hectic for several weeks and that is why more writing hasn’t gotten done but work is also part of the reason I’m about to take flight again. 

Before receiving a job offer a few months ago I had already planned to move to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico seemed like the only viable option at that moment, with any hopes of finding a decent job with a US company but also still being allowed to live in the Caribbean. It’s incredibly hard to find jobs with American companies that will let you work abroad, at least at the level I’m at. If living outside the country isn’t their excuse then it’s because of a certain level of security I need to maintain, given the nature of my job title. Please note: the economy is NOT better in Puerto Rico compared to most areas on the mainland, and you won’t get paid what you do in the US, but with a semi-corporate work-from-home job there’s a better chance I won’t have to panhandle for money along the beaches. I’ve worked from home for over ten years and I’m not stopping now. Well, let’s hope we’ll stop eventually, because we have so much more traveling and writing to do. However, I really do enjoy my job and coworkers at this new company. And, I told the Universe that if I truly was meant to make a pit stop in Puerto Rico, then I would be offered this job. This company is coincidentally based in Puerto Rico, so it seemed like a pretty good sign. To top it off, they have no problem with me relocating there – another good sign.

In a couple of months I should be living there permanently but I’m headed there now for a couple days to take a look around and scope out my new home base. I am purposely landing on the new island the same day I arrived on my old one, a year ago. I wanted to shake off the past experiences and memorable adventures while still honoring them, but acknowledging that I had learned what I needed to for now, in Belize, and step foot on this new home with renewed curiosity, knowledge and perspective.

I am writing this slightly ahead of time and scheduling the post tentatively for after I am supposed to have arrived in Puerto Rico. Anything can happen, but at this moment it feels like the right thing to repeat: the tiny ho has landed…again.

That is how I thought it would go…this is how it went:

If you’ve seen cult classic campy murder mystery movie Clue, as many times as I have, you remember the end of the story was told three different ways, each time with a different turnout – and murderer. I hope this is the last revision – if it’s meant to be – and sincerely hope there are no crimes to report. Currently, all is well and good, but I am still on the mainland and would prefer to be on a tropical island. However, I’d ultimately like to stay safe and that’s why I have rescheduled my descent into the Caribbean for a week’s vacation until next week. 

Maybe it’s not as important for me to land on my new island on the same day a year later that I descended on the old one. Maybe this is the universe’s way of saying, “Hey, jackass, don’t do it exactly like you did before. Try something different. Something better. REWRITE YOUR OWN STORY.” It’s a glaring message that didn’t occur to me until today. But seriously, it’s also a huge theme in the book I am currently writing, so why would it have taken me this long to figure it out? Still learning, friends, I’m still learning. We are not done.

It truly seems that it’s always a man that fucks up my schedule: I’m usually too in love and don’t want to leave, or too fed up to stay. It’s always something, isn’t it? As per usual, with all of my men, this latest disruptor is hot, spicy and ambitious, most likely emotionally unavailable too. His name is Ernesto – Tropical Storm Ernesto – and he is trying to rip a new hole through the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico before possibly curving over to the Bahamas. Now, I am certainly no meteorologist, but I will have to get used to looking at weather reports and live maps and the such, for up-to-the-minute notifications if I don’t want to be another gringo that moves to an island and was too stupid to come in out of a rainstorm that turned into a hurricane. 

To put it simply, if you are looking at the photos of weather maps below, what you should see is an image that’s all blue. Where you see any other color of the rainbow except blue, it should make your butthole pucker, like mine has been for the last three days when I sensed Ernesto and I needed some distance from each other. And that is just what I’m going to give him, as I have had my fill of unnecessary grief from men. Ernesto can slap someone else around this week because next week I’ll arrive and will wrap my lips around a paper straw (because we care about the environment) in a sampling of rum-soaked cocktails in between salsa dancing and sightseeing. 

The tiny ho has not quite landed yet but she will get there, soon enough.