Dear World: I Am Stuck in a Snowstorm & I Smell Like Voldemort’s Cousin

But maybe inconvenience is the new luxury

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

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Why didn’t anyone tell me that I’d buy a house in America and then we’d get 8 tiny infantile inches of snow and then we’d lose power for FOUR DAYS???

I guess I should have checked the little box marked "Snowmaggedon" on my Zillow app.

Woke up yesterday excited about the first snow of the season ❄️ — even went out and took a few snaps of the farmhouse — and didn’t even mind when the power flickered off and all morning. I am used to this. I spent a decade in Central America. The power there goes out once a week.

Or as they call it, “Monday.”

So, I knew to do the standard things: fill up your canisters of water, charge your phone, take a shower. Just in case you lose power for a day. 

The average time we ever lost it for was a day.

Which is why I was stunned that yesterday, I’d get alert after alert from the local power company, pushing back the restoration time in two hour increments — originally it was slated to be back on by 11:00am then 1pm, then 3pm, then 5pm, then 7pm —until finally it got dark and it was cold and I was trying to cook an emergency DiGiorno on the gas stovetop (10/10 do not recommend), when I got the email saying it wouldn’t be restored until Sunday the 24th at 11pm. (It was Friday.)

…and then another one that shortly followed, changing it to: actually, we can’t predict when power will be restored. Which probably means we better buckle down. Until, like, Thanksgiving.

So first of all, not only did I have to eat some busted-ass doughy pizza, but I also am prepared to smell like Voldemort’s cousin here shortly, and on top of it? That cold I mentioned I was getting in my last email? Oh, yeah. She’s full-blast. Runny nose, knives in throat, cough starting. I feel like I’m in the Hunger Games when the evil overlords just keep turning up the stakes to push contestants to their brink.  

Except yesterday was actually nice, in a way? I put on the fire—thank fucking god I have a propane fireplace—and I lit all the candles and I turned on the tea kettle and I made a spiked hot cocoa and turned on my book light and I read some of my pretty, pretty books about interior design in front of the fire. You know, I think the mortals call it “relaxing?” 

I like being forced to slow down. It’s the same reason I love rainy days: there’s no pressure to be anywhere, doing anything fabulous. The environment is screaming “put on your sweatpants! Take a break!” Which is why I would live happily ever after in the UK: I’m FINE with the rain. My nervous system loves the rain!

Snow makes me feel the same way, and my god, when I walked out there to take pictures yesterday, it was just so peaceful. Silent. Not a sound. Until, of course, some guy from Jersey got his car stuck up on the hill by the farmhouse. I heard it from a distance, and sure enough, his little car couldn’t make it up the icy hill so he was sliding backwards into the ditch. And then his tires spun. And he couldn’t get himself out. A friend arrives with a shovel and they start shoveling around his tires, which amused me, and after much fanfare, they were finally able to get the car turned around down the hill.

…but then they tried to go back UP it. Over and over again, tried to go back up this hill, and over and over again, had to slide right back down. Part of it was because he was a sissy with the gas pedal. I wanted to shout at him, “you need to get a bigger head start! Start at the end of the road! Gun it, buddy!” I also wanted to tell him there was another way around that didn’t require going up the hill. But then my township friends showed up in their plow and helped him figure it out.

It was clear he was not from around here. (And not just because he was young, good-looking, and had a full head of hair.)

It is funny to me, the things I know about driving in the snow from a lifetime of growing up here; things I don’t even know that I know, but do. The instinctual knowledge you accumulate. The deep layers of knowing, that are not always conscious.

That ever happen to you? You know how to do stuff you didn’t realize you knew how to do?

This happened to me often this summer in the garden. I knew how to plant those plants from a lifetime of watching my mother do it, even though it wasn’t something I consciously knew how to do. If you asked me if I knew how to garden, I’d absolutely, resolutely say “no.” But put a plant in my hand, and I might prove otherwise. 

This is representative of so many things in life. If I were to ask you if you knew how to run a business, you might say no. But put a business in your hands, and you might prove otherwise. 

Ditto if I were to ask you if you knew how to write something like a sales page. You might not know the “rules,” but I bet you’d have a pretty good idea from a lifetime of reading ‘em. 

We are so much wiser than we give ourselves credit for.

Maybe that is what “trusting yourself” really means: knowing that your lifetime of accumulated knowledge is worth something, and your instincts are actually learned truth, and whatever you feel about something isn’t just a feeling, but a fact.

What if feelings were facts.

What if that nagging feeling you’ve got that you need to try something new, were actually a deep knowing, rather than a flighty whim?

What if everything you want right now is the right thing to want?

And, what if it all worked out?

These are the things I’m thinking about today, by the fire, with the candle, in my oversized sweater, going out and getting buckets of snow to flush the toilet, completely unshowered, yet totally unaffected, because, while inconvenient, I also know that sometimes convenience makes it too easy to keep going, going, going, never pausing to look out the window and enjoy the view and put the tea kettle on and read the 67th book you ordered, but haven’t had time for.

Maybe we should all wish for our lives to be a little more inconvenient.  

Maybe inconvenience is the new luxury.

So long as you remember to fill up your canisters of water and put the kettle on, you’ll be just fine.