The Seasoning That Makes Life Extra Tasty
Issue #42 · Warning ⚠︎ Shameless plugs incoming...
Hi there, I’m Emily! 🙋🏼♀️ For those who are new, here’s a quick catch-up:
Five years ago, I packed my life into a suitcase and hit the road, moving to a new city every few months. Now, I write stories about the quirks, chaos and realities of living abroad, intertwined with my attempt to design a happy, meaningful life.
If you enjoy this post, stick around — something big is coming later in 2025!
The Seasoning That Makes Life Extra Tasty
December 10, 2024: Last month, I wrapped up my second cohort of an online writing bootcamp called Write of Passage.
Like my first go-around this past spring, it was five jam-packed, high-energy weeks of idea sharing, peer editing, and connecting with internet strangers (who always seemed to have way more in common than you’d expect).
Enrolling in Write of Passage back in April was a leap of faith, but it has already paid off with several cool, random opportunities that have come my way directly from it. Most significantly, WoP hired me as an official editor this second go-around — proof of the good that comes from following your curiosities, and the magic of side quests on full display.
In fact, side quests — also known as hobbies, passion projects, short-term obsessions and creativity-fueled personal experiments — have been an important part of my life in recent years, as I’ve broadened my definition of success to encompass more than just traditional work. Now, instead of a 9-5 salary, I’m focused on an Octopus-style1 portfolio career. I have client-based freelance work, I run three eCommerce online shops (more on those below), and even scrape together a few pennies from this here blog (shameless plug to support my writing here).
Any free time left over is filled with a rotation of improving my Spanish, improving at beach volleyball, and long morning runs — all personal hobbies that obviously generate $0, but which, if I’m being honest, get near-equal priority to work because they bring me more joy than a few extra billable hours ever could.
Now, whether living in a small Mexican beach town has allowed me to realize the perks of living unconventionally, or if it's my own independent spirit that led me here in the first place — well, that’s a bit of a chicken-or-egg situation. But either way, I find myself constantly surrounded by other people doing interesting shit:
Take Leslie, a new friend I’ve made since I’ve been back in Puerto Escondido. We’ve gotten to know each other pretty well over the past two months, which is mostly a factor of unintentionally seeing each other every day (consider this a spoiler for another essay I’m cooking up…)
A few weeks ago, Leslie competed in the Reto Puerto Escondido 2024, a 2.5 kilometer open water swim off the coast of Playa Zicatela, the famous Mexican surf pipeline with huge waves and intense currents. She finished second in her division, a massive personal accomplishment that was later celebrated with a pool party (us) and a long nap (her). Up until that day, I had NO idea Leslie swam competitively — turns out, neither did she:
“I love swimming so when I heard about the competition, I just decided to sign-up.”
She also takes salsa lessons, is a regular at morning fitness classes, and is part of the beach volleyball community here, which is how we initially met. To be fair, like many others in this youthful-leaning beach town, she has a bit of 27-year old energy to help fuel all of these hobbies. But blaming a lack of motivation on age (or work, or busy schedules, or kids, or whatever) is an easy excuse — the reality is that most of the time, it’s a matter of saying yes, showing up and getting involved.
You don’t need to wait for permission, an invitation, or a red carpet to be rolled out in front of you. I’ve said it before, and with each new online bootcamp, each new creative endeavor and each new hobby, I only find more truth in the idea that side quests are the seasoning that makes life extra tasty.
Another Shameless Plug…
This time, for one of my OG side quests that I basically never talk about, but totally should.2
A few years back, I launched what I like to call ✨ Emily’s Ecomm Empire ✨ — a collection of Shopify stores that sell things I’ve designed. To be fair, the term “empire” might be a bit of a stretch, as I just recently broke even with one of the three stores. But the opportunity to mix my left-brain entrepreneurial spirit with my right-brain creativity has made this become my most beloved project. And who knows, maybe one day it’ll eventually pay the bills.
Today I want to introduce my first online shop, Backstory Map Co: Posters, maps and artwork inspired by my years of travel, weird obsession with vexillology, and love for nerding-out over a good map. All 400+ designs have been hand-doodled by yours truly!
Credit to who coined this term — his piece My Life as an Octopus: A Generalist Framework for a Richer Life that he wrote earlier this year might just be the Substack essay that resonates with me most 🐙✊🏼
I received advice to share more about my eCommerce shops from , who I randomly chatted with because I listened to ’s workshop on the benefits of cold outreach, which I joined because of Write of Passage, which I enrolled in because I decided to hit ‘publish’ and call myself a writer a few years back. This is exactly what I mean about “the good that comes from following your curiosities,” and more proof that side quests have a tendency to compound into unpredictable, cool opportunities.
My favorite part of this week's newsletter was you introducing us to your friend Leslie. There was something very touching, moving, and joyful about your sharing this friendship and what you like about this person and their presence in your life. BTW, Backstory Map co is brilliant. Love your designs, especially the minimalist posters.
Hi Emily, it was great meeting you in WoP and glad you’re a fellow Mexico nomad! I didn’t know you had a design store on Shopify, I like your minimalist posters! I’ll be opening a Shopify store in January with some of my productivity posters so we’ll have to compare notes! Also thanks for the Octopus shoutout, glad you found that interesting!