Building La Cuna: On Anxiety
In my twenties, I spent nearly a decade backpacking, climbing mountains, and living in remote places. Life was often physically demanding and uncomfortable, but I carried very little anxiety. When things felt hard or risky, they usually were—and I knew how to respond. There was a clear relationship between cause and consequence, effort and outcome.
After moving to the city in my early thirties my life became safer, more controlled, and far more comfortable. Somewhere in that shift, anxiety crept in. I found myself spiraling over things that weren’t dangerous at all: traffic delays, missed connections, minor disruptions. My body reacted as if something was wrong, even when nothing truly was. I hadn’t lost the ability to take care of myself—but I had lost the context that helped me tell the difference between inconvenience and threat.
Building La Cuna has been a return to that context. Physical work, heat, uncertainty, and real constraints have brought my sense of proportion back into focus. When discomfort is honest and earned, it doesn’t linger in the same way. You move through it, adjust, and keep going. The feedback is immediate, and the stakes are clear.
Living and working on the land has changed my sense of what deserves my attention. Water matters, but so does timing. Weather can undo weeks of planning. Many of the things that once felt urgent simply don't anymore.
It has also changed how I listen. When someone who has spent decades on this land worries about water, soil, or the pace of change, I assume there is something worth understanding. Those concerns are usually grounded in long experience rather than speculation.
Perhaps that has been one of the quieter gifts of this place. It has taught me to spend less energy on imagined problems and more on the realities directly in front of me.