The unknown

The Weight of Not Knowing

There’s a particular kind of uncertainty that doesn’t shout — it settles. It sits beside you at the kitchen table, follows you out to the garden, lingers in the quiet moments when you’re trying to breathe. That’s where I’ve been living lately: in the long stretch between knowing and not knowing.

When I agreed to serve as secretary of the interim board, I thought it meant taking notes, keeping things organized, helping the neighbors stay informed. I didn’t realize it meant filing forms I’d never heard of, tracking deadlines no one warned us about, and trying to understand processes that feel like they were written in a language only lawyers speak.

Some days it feels like the paperwork is its own forest — dense, tangled, and impossible to see through. And all of it is happening while we still don’t know if this is even going to happen.

Are we moving forward? Are we stalled? Is this long wait normal? Or are we just sitting in the foggy middle stage — the not‑knowing stage — where everything feels suspended?

I keep asking myself those questions as I type up minutes, organize documents, and try to make sense of the next step. It’s strange to be doing so much work for something that might never come to pass. Strange to be carrying responsibility for a future that isn’t guaranteed.

And stranger still to realize that my no‑spend year — the year I thought would be about simplicity, restraint, and quiet living — has somehow become a year about buying a mobile home park.

How did that happen? How did a year meant for less turn into a year demanding more? More decisions. More paperwork. More emotional weight. More community responsibility.

Sometimes I laugh at the absurdity of it — the way life can twist your plans into shapes you never imagined. I set out to spend less, to live with intention, to focus on enoughness. And instead, I’m helping navigate one of the biggest decisions this community has ever faced.

It feels surreal. It feels heavy. It feels like standing in the middle of a bridge that may or may not lead anywhere.

But there’s something else, too — something quieter. A sense that maybe this is part of the lesson. That maybe a no‑spend year isn’t just about money. Maybe it’s about learning how to stay steady when life tilts. Maybe it’s about discovering that intention can coexist with uncertainty. Maybe it’s about realizing that even when you’re not spending, you’re still investing — in community, in resilience, in the land beneath your feet.

I don’t know how this will end. I don’t know what the next meeting will bring. I don’t know if all these forms I’m filing will ever lead to something real.

But I do know this: I’m showing up. I’m doing the work. I’m holding the map even when the path is foggy.

And maybe that’s its own kind of ownership — not of land, but of courage.