sounds familiar

Well, today is the day.

In a few hours from now, I’ll drain this coffee mug for the second time and we’ll drive away from Cobscook Bay State Park in Maine. And, if you know anything about downeast Maine geography, or US geography, for that matter, you’ll know that we really only have two of four cardinal directions available to move in.

Sure, we could go north into Canada, but that’s still a few days now. We could head back south, too. But no… today is the day we aim west and keep going… all our movement from this day forward starts with a capital W: W, WNW, WSW. Today is what I’ve been calling “the big turn.”

I’ve slacked on writing, I know. We had guests twice in the RV, people who flew out to stay with us for a week each. It was an excellent time both times but I wanted to be present and my normal morning constitutional time wasn’t as readily available. I think that’s why the writing took a hit.

Or maybe it’s this: I’m scared to go back and it’s all I want to write about, and not write about.

Not physically or geographically back. Worldview back, me-time back, wage-slave back. I’m still the same guy, just more potently so, having been distilled over the course of this trip, casting off the cruft that I’d invited to settle. Going back; regressing to ten hours days, corporate grade levels and titles… I finally just cast that chaff to the wind.

But keeping going is part of the process, the road has more refining yet for me, I think. Like I said before, moving in a particular direction doesn’t necessarily mean ending up at a particular place.

Hugs.

One time a long time ago, back in highschool even, I received a compliment that sticks with me to this day.

Y’all have that? Something you remember someone saying about you, the way you act or respond or do something, that was so nice and so meaningful that years later you recall it fondly and it still has meaning to your pride? It’s funny, how something so small, maybe even said offhand, can have such long-term ego boosting power.

In my case, I wouldn’t think Sharaun has any memory of what she said back then, let alone that I still think of it to this day. Yes, it was Sharaun, my then girlfriend now wife, who’s simple words then still make me feel good now, some twenty years later.

So what did she say? Well, we were jogging together (for some reason), and she turned to me and said something to the effect of, “You’ve actually got a really nice running form.” That’s it. Maybe something about my stride and arm movement, I don’t exactly recall.

If y’all know me, and how absolutely uncoordinated at anything physical I am (reference material), let alone how insecure I am about my physical and sporting prowess (reference material), you might begin to understand why this particular small comment meant, and means, so much to me.

I don’t know if I have good running form, and I pretty sure she’s not qualified to make such a judgment, but her saying that really made me feel great.

Still does. Hugs.

Oh, Lord, music on this trip is, like, a thing of incredibly delicate balance.

I love music. I mean really love. It’s an incredibly important thing to me and it gives me all kinds of energy and happiness. Luckily I married a woman who shares my passion for music. Sadly, though, she has no taste.

See, my wife’s taste in music is, to me, awful. You know the stuff: cliched dancefloor fillers, slightly robotic autotuned voices singing “may” instead of “me,” etc. Like for real, her “thumbs up” playlist is comprised almost entirely music I’d be happy to never hear again, ever. I mean I’d prefer if it didn’t even exist, so there’d be no chance. I’m not exaggerating much, either…

Whoever’s driving gets control of the music. This is a very fair system which I’d expect all humans would agree to. On her days I try, y’all, I really do. I mean I can see how happy this steaming manufactured trash makes her, so there’s something redeeming there, at least. But I just can’t do it.

No, everyone doesn’t like Rob Base and DJ EX Rock’s It Takes Two. We’re out here, those who, while we can appreciate the quality of her voice in her prime, think Whitney Houston’s catalog is incredibly boring. And I never, ever, want to, “zooma-zoom-zoom and-a boom-boom,” whatever the hell that is.

But, like my music makes me happy so does her’s her. And, just as I feel the world would be a better place if Michael & Janet never made that terrible white spaceship duet, so does she, I’m sure, wish that the Grateful Dead wasn’t committed to releasing every single sound they made over some thirty plus years.

I just close my ears and hope for one of the scant few tracks we both like to shuffle up. Some Ben Folds, Sheryl Crow, Tom Petty, even Dixie Chicks. Something… anything but that God-awful Never Gonna Get It again… that song is from the devil.

So we take turns, all democratic like, driving, which is really only pretense for controlling the playlist, and suffer nobly through the other’s tastes.

That’s love, y’all. Peace.

Yesterday we stopped for dinner at a true greasy spoon.

A decades old faded sign marked the rundown building sitting in the dead middle of a massive, empty, poorly paved and potholed parking lot. A derelict pumping station on the back edge of the huge lot, and plenty of room for truckers to pull off on the muddy curtain.

Inside was that sort of brokedown familiar, you can probably see the joint in your mind’s eye before I even describe it. Walls and floors ala manufacturered home. Brown water stains swirl on the acoustic ceiling tiles. Counter straight ahead with stool seating, tickets hung in the kitchen window, tables in ordered rows in the open space and walls lined with booths, menus stacked near the register.

All the furniture of the sort that surely was the #1 selling brand to diner owners across America in the early 1970s. The penultimate diner booth: metal edging around the flecked-top laminate table, faux leather benchs, that black napkin dispenser with a layer of dust on top.

Nothing looks particularly clean, but maybe that’s just age. This place is established. I overhear the single waitress ask, “the usual?” at two different tables, exchanging pleasantries with the regulars.

There’s a board with specials on either side of the house, nice handwriting. Today there’s a choice of soups: ham & cabbage or ground beef macaroni tomato. You can get a cup of either with a tuna melt for $8. There’s also baked chicken, potatoes, and green beans or a chicken club sandwich, both also $8.

I opt for the tomato soup and tuna melt. It’s toasted white bread with a slice of cheese-food on either side, chunk tuna and mayo in between. I’m not even a big fan of tuna, but it feels right to order this here… like the institution demanded it. Ate it all gone, tipped 20%.

I’m not sick today so there’s that.

Excuse my absence.

Last week my mother-in-law came to stay with us, wanting to experience road life and see some of New England. We had a great time and the schedule worked like magic. We got to show her a little of Massachusetts, and a good bit of New Hampshire and Vermont.

I didn’t write much. One, because I typically write during the time where I’m up in the morning and the family is not, but Sharaun’s mom is also an early riser so we took to taking a walk each day instead. Two, because I used her time here as a tool to help me use this stupid phone so much. So, a little digital break & some morning walking instead.

Changing gears… one of this things I enjoy about this trip is learning the different ways each of us in the family is experiencing it. Not to get all cerebral, but I find that each of us had different expectations going in, is getting different things from it along the way, and we’ll likely each be changed in different ways upon coming back.

When we really talk about it together, I learn all kinds of things.

Yesterday evening, walking the shore of Lake Champlain with Sharaun, I said something that made me realize that, all along, I’ve been thinking of the trip as the time between the end of one thing and the beginning of a new thing, a transition. To Sharaun and Keaton, however, it’s more like a long pause; a break from, but a return to, a single, same, unchanged thing.

This is a big difference of perception, and explains a lot to me about my attitude towards the trip’s drawing to a close versus theirs. As our last months and weeks and days pass, a brand new start is what’s ahead in my mind – all the nervousness and uncertainty and fear. In their mind it’s a return to normal – a joyous reunion with anticipation and welcoming and familiar comforts.

OK so I painted that a little more black and white than it is for the sake of making the point. Still, it was a realization for me.

Hugs.

I continue to use writing to process my thoughts on returning to the working world after this year on the road.

Back in March I wrote that I’d been working to capture a minimal set of highest-order “environmental criteria” I’d like to be sure are met by my next career move. In that writing, I decided that job satisfaction for me is less about what I’m doing and more about the environment in which I’m doing it.

I wanted to keep the list short and succinct. Three bullets, all tight single sentences. I find enforcing that sort of brevity helps me avoid the long-windedness I’m prone to. In the end the below is what I’ve landed on and am happy with. A bit more about each underneath, for my own sake.

1. No longer “on call:” No standing expectation to be available (email, text, cell) outside working hours
2. Lesss hectic calendar: Fewer meetings & more time for doing, innovating, giving back
3. Healthier work/life balance: Respect for sanctity & prioritization of family time

Reflecting, I don’t think any are too bold, unrealistic, or read as entitled. Some are certainly “whiplash,” where I’m essentially saying I don’t want to go back to how it was, but I think that’s OK because they’re also honest hopes I have in what a different work environment may be able to offer.

In regard to #1, I really enjoy helping people so being in customer service/support is a natural match. Having to make service of those customers higher priority than my evenings, weekends, and family time, however, sucks. With room for reasonable exception, I want less corporate intrusion into non-working hours.

#2 then. Corporate types feel a sense of status from how overbooked we are. Busy busy busy – that’s how you’ll know I’m a successful person. I’ll tell you about the 5am/5pm Sunday meetings I have with the factory in Vietnam, and even though it appears I’m griping, I’m also bragging. I need much less of this, honestly because I get caught up in it and become it.

For #3, it’s easy. Cultures and bosses who get off on the opposite of numbers 1 and 2 above will fail to be able to meet this criteria. I understand that some folks are fine deriving all their value and satisfaction from busyness and stress, and that’s great but it’s not what I want to be a part of. Simple.

Fin.

Hearts.

Getting there vs. being there.

Leaving from vs. going to.

I have issues with these distinctions.

Most often, I just want to be there, and completely miss the getting there. It’s behavior I find difficult to change even on this trip, which is literally designed to make the getting there the there. Yet I struggle still. In fact even when the there is nowhere near as interesting as the getting there, I’ll still rush and, upon arriving early, wonder why.

Similarly, I tend to think of transitions primarily as endings as opposed to beginnings. I feel, however, that this over-seasons things in terms of loss or setback versus renewal or adventure, and thus tends to make me avoid change. If I could at least be balanced, knowing that all transition is both loss and growth, I think I’d be better for it.

Worse, I have this sneaking suspicion that life is a constant state of transition and is always getting there versus ever being anywhere…

Let’s not squander.

Peace.