Three years ago, I shut the switch off for Adventures Across. It was one of the most devastating and depressing days of my life. Years of maintaining our story, a website, a web shop ended with the click of the button. That day, I committed to shutting down my dreams forever and surrendered to my life of being a full time window cleaner. I had no idea what was next and didn’t dare to dream after losing everything I worked for.

I had to shut down Adventures Across. So many things weren’t working. My website was a mess. I couldn’t afford to pay for the website hosting. Nobody bought anything from my shop. My YouTube channel waned after I got freaked out about a stalker situation. I couldn’t make art anymore, and the inspiration I needed to make art was unattainable.

My life went from creative paradise to a working nightmare. Every moment of my life was dedicated to doing labor in exchange for money because I had to. At the root of this situation, I found that my foundation was fragile, built upon toothpicks. I had to shut the website off because I was supporting a dream, but it wasn’t supporting me.

Part of me couldn’t give up fully though. I kept a blog on Substack and Medium, created a Ko-fi store for small prints and made videos every once in awhile. Each act I’d partake in writing, painting, or filming was like the pruning of my dream garden, even though it got way out of hand with weeds. The work I published in the last three years was centered around shadow-work type stuff because I was in a hard place spiritually and mentally, constantly replaying my failures in my mind.

Stirrings visited me throughout the first part of this year. Austin and I went camping for my birthday in March and he had food poisoning the whole time. It was in these silent moments alone while he slept that I realized I closed an important door in my life. Something in me wanted to live rather than be floaters in my head. I decided to start writing a new book after we arrived home from camping and worked on it for a few months consistently.

It wasn’t until we took a road trip 2,000 miles away from home for a few weeks in July that I reconnected with those lost parts of me. Something about staring at a road for twenty-seven hours straight brings one back to themselves.

We left half of our life in Wisconsin when we moved into Stella in 2023 that lived in a mildewy storage unit. Part of our mission during the road trip was to bring our stuff back to Arizona and integrate it into our tiny life again.

Upon opening several totes I found my library of books, box of crystals, and all of the art I ever created organized neatly in portfolio binders. We collected Austin’s paintings and discovered a trove of history from our twelve years together.

Seeing the paintings of flowers, fantasy characters and landscapes hit me. It’s true I burned all of my journals pre-2023, deleted hundreds of videos and 2/3’s of the archives I created on Adventures Across.

The one thing I didn’t destroy were my paintings.

In total, I found three sketchbooks and two portfolio binders full of art I created during different chapters of my life. I started with water color pencils, then moved to gouache paints six years ago which filled the majority of the portfolio space. I found a couple of funny sketchbooks that Austin kept and some of my favorite paintings of his.

All the grief I’d been carrying fell away and joy replaced it. How could I ever think that my art… sucked? That it was “wrong” because it doesn’t fit “someone’s” narrative? Why did I care so much about the potential thoughts someone would have of the art? Of me? I was relieved to find this art. It was the part of me I kept and didn’t throw away and was sacred.

Austin and I carefully layered his paintings over the totes of things we were bringing back to Arizona. This moment was iconic for us. It was the first time ever in twelve years that we fully committed to staying somewhere and having all of our belongings with us. Not split up between parents’ houses, grandparent’s basements, three storage units. No, it would be split up between our own storage unit and Stella our home. No longer would we be scattered across space and time. Just… two miles down the road in a gated facility.

Upon returning home, we filled our new small storage unit with the things we brought back. I bought a rolling coat rack and a bookshelf to display my gowns and books on. Who wants to live out of a box? The likelihood of having a grounded structure to live in is unlikely at the moment, so I will make a storage unit my second home. I do believe in miracles though. Who knows when an opportunity for a home base will come up.

A week went by. I got sick. Had to recover from an intense month of family adventures and traveling. And then a very special day came. Jupiter, the planet of expansion and abundance aligned with the Sun in the sign of Leo, on the day of the full moon.

Now, I haven’t been into astrology for awhile. Years maybe. But it was always something that fascinated me and piqued my curiosity. I like to experiment around to see if these “cosmic alignments” actually work. If my Saturn Return taught me anything about astrology, it’s that it’s no bullshit. If your foundations aren’t sturdy, Saturn will let you know it…

The last time Jupiter moved into Leo for a year was back in 2014/2015, the year I met Austin. What brought Austin and I together was our love for creating music & art, as well as adventure and our connection to nature.

The last time Jupiter was in Leo was the year we met. Three months into our relationship we moved in together and started our life of adventure. 2014/2015. The year we lived in Canada for a summer to find out that we have a passion for not only travel, but tiny living and organic gardening. That year of my life was like a doorway into my next big chapter of life. The chapter I became a nomad, an organic farm hand, an artist, lived in tons of alternative living situations. All of the instances that brought me to where I am now – living my 2014 self’s version of her dreams.

Reflecting on this, I thought, well… if this happens once every twelve years, and it’s back, must mean that another big door is opening for us. Both of us have Leo ascendant in our chart which is why I think it can be a good opportunity. All this Leo energy is supportive to our life path. I mean, hypothetically. We’ll see what ends up happening.

While we drove down the road one day, Austin nonchalantly says to me, “You know, we should look for online work. Figure out how to live more remotely.” Flabbergasted, I was like, “Really?” I was literally thinking the same thing earlier. It is rare for him to bring up a topic like this and he usually doesn’t like to talk about it unless it is logical. I do admit, I daydream of being able to travel more. I don’t think being a full time nomad would work for me these days, but having my own home base and a few months of travel a year would suffice.

And… we can’t be window cleaners forever. Might as well start experimenting with something that can replace windows in several years.

We talked about it. It started with me journaling, and Austin researching possible remote work we could do. He laughed and told me his findings, “I think we should start a business. A food truck or something.” What he meant was, “I can’t do any of these jobs online. Let’s do something more fun.”

The Wandering Teacup came out. A traveling tea shop. Or the traveling curiosity museum. Or a burger truck. Drink truck. Nothing felt right.

“Why don’t we start an art studio? We’re already going to sell your paintings. I have more than one hundred. We could sell originals and prints,” I suggested. The second business wasn’t supposed to replace window cleaning (yet), it is supposed to let us travel for a few months and be able to afford that. Austin liked the idea. The traveling art studio idea is symbiotic with our life already. I’m working on art & books everyday anyway, and canvas art could easily be created while traveling.

What else could I do while on a break from cleaning windows than to sit with a journal and to write letters to Jupiter? Oddly enough, a month earlier when Jupiter actually moved into Leo, I wrote a letter explaining how I want to feel in the next year, what would be fun to experience. That letter was similar to my thoughts about starting a new business.

So, on the day of the full moon, I sat down with my journal and wrote. Yet the orange ink didn’t stop with one or two pages. I must have written fifteen pages of plans and ideas down for creating a new website.

A few days earlier, we cleaned windows for one of our clients who was a professional artist for a living. Literally! Her house is filled with large canvas art she created over her long lifetime. This woman is respectable, witty, professional, hard working and resilient. Nothing could stop her in her pursuit of life, despite the adversity she often shares with us. Her house is elegant and expensive looking. And we clean her windows very often. All of these observations told me that she wouldn’t do anything half-fast and worked to earn her living as a fine artist.

I asked myself that day, what would she do? If I asked her advice, what would she tell me? The first thing that entered my consciousness was, “She had an art business Ashley, she wasn’t just an artist.“

In that moment, a seed planted within me to research website hosting. Because I’d been an artist all along, but not really a business owner. Working with Austin in our window cleaning business taught me so much these last few years. All that I was lacking the last time I tried to run an art business.

On the full moon, I researched the hosting service I’d use. Made an outline for every task I’d have to complete to make a website. Hand drew it out in my sketchbook with all the written portions so I could easily reference something to get started. Figured out how I wanted to make prints. It all came through me on that day.

One thing led to another. I bought hosting. I transferred my old domain to the new hosting service. Magically learned WordPress in 24 hours. Today I photographed all of my art and collected Austin’s photos from the archives and put them in galleries on the new website. The last things to do are check the site over, insert my blog archives, and to add items to the shop. Somehow I did all of this in a week.

We aren’t working right now due to the monsoon storms destroying people’s windows with rain and dust. We rely on construction cleaning jobs and work from realtors during the summer which makes it the perfect time to work on computer projects. I’m healing from a chronic illness at the moment and my body said no to working Monday & Tuesday. Instead of cleaning windows I cleaned up my digital life, worked on planting new seeds and tended to my inner garden that desperately needed a weeding.

Some seeds take eons to sprout, I’m learning, and it is better to plant them than to leave them in the void space of the mind. I’m finding seeds I planted in 2015 that have grown wildly and much too tall that I must trim back. Or that delicate perennial native to the prairie that needs extra care right now. I’m finding old packs of seeds that I left on the garden table that got a bit crinkly from the deluge I had a few years ago… but the seeds are still in tact. I think I’ll plant them now.

Once I finish this website, I have other online work to do. I think I’ll revise my books and come out with new editions. Finish series of paintings with dozens of constellations to fill in. Perhaps I’ll try writing to some prairie conservation non-profits to see if my work is interesting to them. I’ll for sure jump back into writing my sci-fi book Forget-Me-Nots.

What’s important is, Adventures Across is alive again. And I’ve made it a safe place for all facets of our lives to exist on. It is the first step to creating a stable foundation for the next twelve years of life. Considering the last twelve, I’m sure something remarkable will happen. I’m here for it.

Thanks for joining me today, friend. Some of you on this newsletter have been here forever and I just want to say a big thanks to you! This journey is one I must take alone and must sustain myself emotionally during the highs and lows, but it is so good to have you here to know me too. Your support and interaction with me means a lot, I wish you could know!

Recently I ran into one of my long term YouTube followers at work. This is one of those “Universe Things” that was so random, so synchronistic, that it completely blew my mind.

I was leaning out of a window one sweltering day and the neighbor watering her flowers asked me if I was a professional window cleaner. I was like, “I guess…” thinking that Austin was more of the professional than me.

The next thing she said was, “Hey, I think I know you!”

I was like, “Oh, from Next Door? I heard people write about us on there.”

“No! I bought a bunch of your art!” she said, excited.

At this point I was like, “Yeah right. It’s been years since I sold anything.” So I said blatantly, “I think you have the wrong person.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Ashley.”

“It is you! I recognize your voice! I’ll go get the art and show you!” Moments later, she came out with a lantern with every face of it covered in my “fantasy” art. “The order got lost, so you sent me a new round of prints and this pendant you found at a sacred site. I’ve been watching you on YouTube since 2021!”

What. The. Fuck.

She shared some of what she knew of me, for she had a para-social relationship with me. This was the first time ever that someone from the internet knew me in the wild. Ever! It was unbelievable to me, still at this point.

But meeting her that day did two things for me.

1. Filled me with this immeasurable gratitude for anyone who took the time to watch my videos and to follow my journey. What a special thing to have all these people in the world know you (for I put some of the most vulnerable things about myself on the internet those days that my friends and family don’t even know…) and choose to spend precious moments of their life with you over a screen, and

2. Gave me a spark of passion that, “Hey, what you’re doing matters. People like it and care. But most importantly, you like it and should be doing this.” That I make an impact, whether sharing a dark story and how I came out of it or my whimsical “fantasy” art that inspires a person to open their mind to curious possibilities.

She, and my friends following me around the internet, are angels. Thank you so much for being here, and I wish there was some way I could hug you and thank you other than words, but this will have to do for now. You guys are the best. I love you so much. And if you see me in the wild, don’t be afraid to say hi even if I look feral and unfriendly. Lol.

This will do for today’s post. I’m not sure when I’ll be back or what my new “work schedule” will end up being once we begin our busy season with work, but know I’m still here and am working on something or other. 🙂

Here’s the new website! It is still under construction, but is mostly coherant! Please don’t buy anything from the shop, it’s not ready yet! https://adventuresacross.com

I’m also pretty active on Instagram and update my stories often. I have to figure out what to post now with a different perspective of Adventures Across, but I’ll figure it out. Feel free to share anything on there that you find useful.

Much love,

Ashley