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Today is my 6th full day away from home.
I’ve made stops in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and now Rhode Island, staying with friends along the way.
I’m currently being hosted by my good friend and colleague (and future podcast co-host - more on that soon, I hope),
.I’ve been here for the past few days, but I haven’t had more than a couple of crammed-in hours for writing. I’m still mostly decompressing. Still talking through things a lot. Still trying to feel quasi-normal when nothing is.
Yesterday I got coffee from a local shop and met up with my hosts for brunch.
I watched my New York Football Giants win their first game of the season.
I had the chance to Facetime my two youngest. It was awkward and strange, peering through my phone into a home I used to live in, looking at the faces of people I love who are living a life without me there. I wished I could have given them hugs, but it was good to see them nonetheless.
I still don’t have any idea how to download the full list of people who have contributed to my upkeep from Venmo/Paypal/Stripe so that I can say thank you to everyone directly. I beg you not to take my lack of communication as ingratitude. You’ve all given me the means to subsist through this time in a way that I don’t have to focus as immediately and desperately on finding more work while still on the road, and I cannot thank you enough. I’m hoping to use some of this period to develop some projects that will be financially workable in the longer term, but I’m not there yet.
Right now I’m still just adjusting to the new reality: waking up in unfamiliar beds, in unfamiliar rooms, in other people’s homes, feeling welcomed and loved…but also not as though I truly belong. I am a visitor in other people’s lives. It is both comforting and disorienting not to know my place in the universe anymore.
In a similar vein, I have no idea what life will look like in a month, let alone six months or a year. There’s no map for this territory. No known destination to head for.
I am currently sitting in the library of the school where Kale teaches, working from my laptop on a little desk against the far wall. My email has gotten out of control since leaving, and I have a bunch of random tasks to attend to. Today, I think I might go for a solo drive to one of the many beaches here so I can sit and think. I’ve been doing a lot of talking with people, which has been really helpful, but a little soul-nourishing silence might be nice, too, as long as it doesn’t last too long.
I have a growing sense that this time in “exile” (as I’ve taken to thinking of it) is all for something I can’t yet see. I have the odd intuition that I am on some kind of unasked-for quest, picking up pieces of a puzzle I don’t have a reference picture for, trying to figure out where they all fit.
Perhaps to dial that in a little more specifically, it feels like an involuntary pilgrimage of some kind: arduous, uncertain, but stimulating of some kind of unexpected growth that will come to full realization only at the as-yet-unseen destination.
If it is, as I said in another recent post, a kind of “Hero’s Journey,” then I am at the part just beyond the “Threshold,” sliding quickly towards the “Abyss.”
My hope is to head further West soon. I’ve got a handful of national parks I haven’t yet visited across the Northern and Western states, and I’d like to see them if I can. I’ve got some folks to stay with in Michigan and Chicago, but after that, it gets dicey. (If any of you are in northern New York along I-90, or in Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, or California and would be up for a brief visit from a vagabond, please send me a message. I’m not yet sure of my route, but would love to know my options.)
Ultimately, I’ve got to figure out where I end up on a more permanent basis. My kids are in Raleigh and I want to be able to see them more than occasionally, but I don’t know anyone else there, and living in isolation feels suffocating to me right now. Not being alone this past week has been an incredible help. I am obviously saddened by the current state of affairs, but in other respects I feel very much like myself again in ways I’ve not felt in a long time. I used to travel alone quite a bit in my 20s, and there’s been a kind of re-connection to that long-dormant version of me that feels surprisingly invigorating.
The last thing I expected to feel when my life came apart was alive.
But it seems that something old and dysfunctional is dying, and something new and unexpected is being born.
The only thing I can do is accept my destiny and go along for the ride.
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Hey Steve, good to hear from you (and if any of us were expecting expressed gratitude, I'll just say you are helping us do what Jesus told us to do: give to one without expecting repayment. But you write, and that is my recompense, thank you.) Take the long way home. God bless.
You've got me remembering the 'grand tour' of sorts I took out West after my junior year of high school. Wall Drug, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, Yellowstone, Rocky Mountains, Little Bighorn - it opened up something inside me that changed me forever. If you're contemplating something like that, I hope it will do some good for you too.
Of course, as a loyal Midwesterner, I'd be remiss if I didn't pitch heading up to the UP to catch the amazing fall colors up there—and, perhaps, a dip in Lake Superior to liven the senses! I know you said you're not much of a camper, but you might be able to find a nice place along the lake to pitch a tent. I imagine most of the cabins up there are booked now, but you never know...
In any event, while my heart grieves for your loss, I look forward to hearing continued reports from your journey—an Odyssey of sorts, you might say. Fair winds and following seas, Steve.