Earth Bound Misfit: A MUSEing on the Art of Being

a MUSEing—that invites others to explore their own journey, question their conditioning, and engage with their existence more consciously.

Earth Bound Misfit: A MUSEing on the Art of Being

I could be anywhere—New York City, a small rural town, or deep in the woods—but the truth is, location has never dictated my experience. My reality resides in vision, in reflection, in the way my consciousness interacts with this Earth Spaceship and its assigned Spacesuit—my body, my identity, my coordinates in time and space.

This is my MeMoir of being an Earth Bound Misfit—not because I reject the world, but because I observe it from an angle that is slightly askew. I am both in this world and outside of it, a passenger aboard Spaceship Earth, studying the mechanics of being human. And not just any human—a female-presenting body assigned to Cheryl Milum, born in 1975, rural Ohio, programmed with a storyline that was never mine to write.

Or so it seemed.

The Unraveling

Conditioning is funny. You don’t realize how much of your operating system is pre-installed until something inside you begins to unwind. The great un-conditioning was slow, just as the programming had been, an unraveling of tightly woven threads: identity, expectation, limitation. I watched it happen. I allowed it to happen.

And now, another phase is ending. But this time, I am not simply moving on—I am moving through, observing the patterns that have emerged across decades of life on Earth. What am I really? Where do I end, and the other begin?

This isn’t just my memoir. This is a message in a bottle, cast into the cosmic ocean for future generations—my grandchildren, future generations, anyone curious enough to question:

How do we best operate this Being?

Not just the mind, not just the body, but the integration of all that we are.

The Curriculum of Being Human

To be a Soul is to be in relationship—not only with others, but with the very essence of existence. There is no them. No they. There is only we—Earth Bound Beings, sharing a planet with plants, animals, and unseen energy fields pulsing just beyond our limited perception.

We obsess over who we are and why we are here. But maybe those questions are distractions.

Maybe the real question is: How?

How do I operate this Spacesuit effectively? This vessel that carries me through this strange, fleeting experience of life? What could possibly be more important than learning to navigate it well?

We do not choose the imprints of childhood. But let’s be honest—the life force within us chose this journey. The will to live propelled us into these coordinates, this incarnation, this unique lesson plan. And perhaps, what seems to go wrong is simply the very thing that, with wisdom, will one day make everything right.

If that’s true, then blame becomes pointless. Judgment, unnecessary. The real work is to observe our personal data set—our experiences, our beliefs, our patterns—and experiment with what is authentic and true.

The Observer Returns

For seven years, I stepped out of the Mundane World. Retreated to the woods, with my husband, Ryan. Lived in solitude, where peace came easily. In the quiet, I studied. I journaled. I simply existed—watching, listening, waiting.

And then, a new phase began.

Ryan and I re-entered the human experience—first, in a small town of 3,000 souls, then in a slightly larger city where nature still lingered at the edges. Ryan returned to work. I remained on the outskirts of society, watching people move through their daily loops, deciding whether I wanted to step back inside.

At first, I felt a kind of repulsion—frustration at their compliance, their obedience to the system we had fought to leave. But disgust is just another face of fear. I wasn’t repulsed—I was disoriented.

I had become an outsider to the very world I sought to inspire. And I realized: if I wanted to create something for them, I had to first be with "them."

The Great Experiment

So, I took the next step. I joined the world again.

Not as the same person who had left. Not as the conditioned Cheryl Milum, nor the hermit who had escaped to be amoungst the trees. I entered as a scientist of experience.

I wanted to understand what keeps people locked in loops. What drains their life force. What prevents them from becoming fully human.

I wanted to know why people complain about their circumstances, yet continue to feed the very behaviors that create them. I wanted to see what keeps them in arrested development, never breaking through to the other side, never fully activating the potential of their Earth Spacesuit.

And the truth?

I am still discovering. I am still experimenting.

What I know is this: Art can alchemize dysfunction.

For years, I have made art from my chaos. My time on Spaceship Earth has always been about creating, questioning, journaling, and now—musing.

And so, here I am. Writing not a memoir to you, but a Quantum MeMoir to us—to all the we’s who feel the call to study themselves, to question their conditioning, to master the art of being.

It’s not about escaping the Mundane World. It’s about learning to exist within it—with clarity, with purpose, with a knowing that this life is a curriculum of cosmic proportions.

And if we are here, there must be a function, a Purpose.

🚀 Welcome aboard, fellow Earth Bound Misfits.

Cheryl Milum