Two weeks after I moved into the beach place, the owner asked if I wanted to stay a full year.
I mean, I love it here already. But am I supposed to be here? How do you really know?
Originally, I told myself I’d stay here for three months.
It’s the place where, as I told you last Sunday, I went into the water at sunset and started laughing with no idea where it was coming from.
But a full year?
My old place, the one I left on moving day, was a sublet from a friend who hooked me up with a really nice deal back in the building I had lived in for five years.
Maybe that’s why it never felt like home. I was ready for a place to call my own.
For about two years I’ve waffled on where to live. At the start of this year I packed up for Asheville. Successfully went. Unsuccessfully stayed. Came back to Miami after a few months.
On Friday night, I tried something fairly new to me as of the last two years. I asked.
Help me.. am I supposed to be here?
Call it prayer, meditation, whatever word works for you. I was looking for anything that could tell me I was on the right path.
Hey man, just give me a sign here.
So I hit “send” on the message from my mind & heart and I went for a walk along the beach, letting go of those thoughts entirely so I could enjoy the magic of walking on the beach in the evening.
It had been a really good week. Pasi, one of our members, released his album live in Elfen Town, the little virtual world we’re building inside Eleven Dunbar, and I got to watch him grin through three songs while the chat filled with hearts from members, new faces, friends & even his family. We pushed out some new updates to Donut (our app). Recorded a really fun podcast. I built a new DnD game using Gerhard Molin’s artwork and I started working on a few book ideas (in addition to my children’s book in progress).
Gerhard was heading to Japan. I can’t wait to see how that inspires an artistic mind like G.
So I left him a little voice note to send him off with good vibes. Gratitude for the journey we’re on together and for the week we just got to experience because of what we do and the people we’re surrounded & inspired by every day.
Nothing really came up during the walk. But I find that when I send a message like that to folks, I’m filled with all sorts of intense energy. Maybe it’s adrenaline, oxytocin, or whatever the chemical is for a type of love.
And of course, I replay the message a few times to make sure it landed the way I wanted it to. I really try to feel it.
Smiling and ready to use that energy to get into a handpan session, I put my keys into the door. And for the first time, I really looked at my unit number.
It adds up to 11.
I hope this finds you well.
Oh my gosh. Again!!
I snapped a photo and sent it straight to Gerhard.
“Dude, you’re not even going to believe what my unit number is.”
I’m supposed to be here. I didn’t even realize this was the unit I was in.
Eleven has been everywhere since G and I discovered that the numerology of our names comes out to eleven and gave us the idea for how to name our company. I didn’t know really what a master or angel number really was at the time. That’s what eleven is.
Oh boy, do I know now.
It involves spiritual awakening, intuition, purpose, twin flame connections, reminder to pay attention to your thoughts as that manifests your reality, teacher.. and funny enough, is represented in the tarot by Justice which is basically what my name means.
Oh and there’s more. Like how eleven in German is elf, which is how our folks became Elfs, and our town became Elfen Town.
Both places I stayed in Asheville had 11 in the address.
You’re on the path.
And when I came back to Miami, my apartment number was 11.
Even my handpan. Ayasa, the brand that made it, adds up to 11. So does the word handpan, if you ask the right numerologist.
Each time, I only realized after the fact. I actually just looked up “Ayasa” and “handpan” while writing this article and of course they came back as 11s.
In I Owe You I wrote that I put myself back on my own list on May 11th, and after the date I wrote one more word. Eleven.
Yesterday I posted a photo of the twin lighthouses on Thacher Island, two towers that look like the two lines in our logo.
And one I’d somehow missed for two weeks.
I moved into the beach place on October 11th.
I even wrote it down myself. That day’s essay, Same little kid, says it right there: “Today I moved.”
You really can’t make this stuff up.
There’s an old word for the ache underneath all this. In 1688 a Swiss doctor named Johannes Hofer coined it for Swiss soldiers serving far from home, homesick to the point that it was treated as a disease. He called it nostalgia: from the Greek nostos, return, and algos, pain. The pain of wanting to go home.
For two years, I think I was homesick for a place I hadn’t found yet.
Don’t forget the game you’re replaying from the early 2000s is called Final Fantasy... wait for it...
...Eleven.
A while back, after last year’s inner work, when I’d just gotten my handpan and started dreaming again, I came up with a musician name. Anamnesis. It’s Plato’s word for the idea that learning is really remembering what the soul already knew.
I never really broadcast it or did anything with it. It was more so a thing you do or think about as you’re just getting started into something like that and begin to fantasize about where it could go.
Recently, I went with Justin the Making instead. Kind of like Tyler, the Creator I guess. Evolving from one to the other before anyone ever heard either has been a nice journey. I like to thingify and productize things, it’s just how my brain works.
I’ve written “when you move, the universe moves with you” twice in these essays. And it certainly feels like the universe is starting to reshape around me in all sorts of neat little ways.
Last month I wrote that there are three questions I keep coming back to. Who do I want to be? Where do I want to be? Who do I want to be with? The middle one, I said, was the open one.
Back in April I called it (where I want to be) a red blinking light. I hoped something would turn it a little yellow, and then eventually green.
A few weeks ago, in The spark finds you, I wrote: “A spark for someone. And you know what? That’s where I want to be. In moments exactly like that.”
On Thursday I had one… watching Pasi grin at a screen full of hearts.
And I was here. In the 11 all along.
So I told the owner yes. A full year. It just brings me so much peace here.
As I was researching how I wanted to end this week’s essay, I looked up the numerology of the word home. Want to take a wild guess on what it is?
Its soul urge number is 11.
Soul Urge Number 11 / 2: Reflects inner intuition, sensitivity, cooperation (community), and a desire for harmony or spiritual insight.
Welcome home.
What’s your 11? The sign that tells you that you’re right where you need to be.
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