Note: This essay was originally published on the evening of April 8th, 2024 — the date of Earth’s last total solar eclipse — written while fully consumed by FOMO.

Two years later, I now live in the path of totality of tomorrow’s eclipse.

Coincidence or divine intervention? Forgive the woo, but I have to go with the latter given how this essay feels even more relevant today than it did two years ago.

Enjoy! 🌚✨

Celestial Enlightenment

April 8, 2024: Somewhere in the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio, there’s a woman who spent the day in her office cubicle deeply engrossed in an Excel spreadsheet. Knowing that today would be a particularly busy Monday, she brown-bagged it and worked through lunch, barely even taking a restroom break.

She’s among the lucky 30 million Americans who live in the path of totality of today’s total solar eclipse, yet she passed on the chance to experience one of nature’s most powerful, rare phenomenons due to a work deadline.

While I don’t know this woman personally, the thought of her existence depresses me — because similar to people who leave unused vacation days on the table, this is the antithesis of what I believe life should be about.

Flashback to August 21, 2017, the most recent total solar eclipse in the United States, and the very first of my lifetime: I was just two weeks into working a new full-time job, and while my office in suburban Maryland was hundreds of miles too far away to experience anything noteworthy, the TV in the break room had live coverage from CNN rolling. I nervously suggested to my new coworkers that we go watch for a few minutes — nobody budged.

Despite their indifference, I snuck down the hall for a late afternoon coffee as darkness first descended on eclipse-chasers in Charleston, South Carolina. The crowd of tens of thousands burst into cheers, hugs, and celebration as they experienced this once-in-a-lifetime moment firsthand. Instant jealously washed over me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was not where I’m supposed to be — “this” being alone in an windowless break room, sipping a lukewarm coffee, wearing unflattering dress pants.

It was a mostly insignificant moment that actually turned out to be quite pivotal. While I already knew that commuting to an office in order to build someone else’s dream was wildly out of alignment with my entrepreneurial, independent spirit, it was later that night when I finally devised a plan to begin freelancing on the side. Six months later with enough projects under my belt, I quit — the first falling domino that nudged me towards the untraditional life path I’ve been following ever since.

To be clear, I’m not an earth science nerd nor a spiritual woo-woo astrology gal by any means. The eclipse held no particular significance besides that it was something different, something novel, something that provided an opportunity to feel zest for life, and something that I just couldn’t shrug off like all of my apathetic coworkers did.

This morning as I watched coverage of the revelers from Mazatlán to Montréal, I felt this same enthusiastic FOMO, and firmly decided that yes, I will experience a total solar eclipse in person in my lifetime — third time’s the charm, who’s coming to Spain with me in August 2026?!

I’m proud of the fact that I get excited about eclipses and rainbows and sunsets, and that just last month I dove into a murky crocodile-filled lagoon under complete darkness in order to see bioluminescent plankton.

Because if we aren’t chasing a life full of enthusiasm and excitement and amazement… what are we chasing?

More Celestial Enlightenment