Anniversaries can bring up intense emotions, especially when you are least expecting it. And this week (the one year anniversary of the beginning of my solo wanderings) was no exception.
I remember the moment when is began so clearly. I was in Sedona, Arizona. That morning, I finished my week long Baptiste training. I felt empowered, but at the same time, I didn’t want to go out entirely on my own, so I’d arranged to spend my first “solo travel day” exploring the mountains with two friends. We spent the day hiking, eating, and talking. But by dinner, as I knew the two were about to leave me for some romantic time between themselves, I still had no plan of what was next. Maybe I’d just stay in town and crash their adventures again the next day? Perhaps, but where would I sleep that night? I hadn’t yet booked a place to stay.
Not wanting to be rude and use my phone in front of them, I went to the bathroom of the restaurant and scrolled through options on hotels.com. But I was appalled how expensive everything that came up was. Sure, I could afford it, but it wasn’t consistent with my values or budget. I couldn’t stomach the idea of spending two hundred dollars on a hotel for myself when I was unemployed. But after a few minutes of searching, and feeling that I’d been in the bathroom too long, I decided to put my phone away and go back to the table still without a plan.
When we got the check, my friend Kat asked, “where are you staying?” to which I shrugged, and admitted, “I don’t know.”
After hugging them goodbye, I got into my car, turned on the ignition and I felt a moment of panic. What should I punch into the GPS? And then, what am I doing with my life? How could I not have a plan or place to sleep at 8pm at night? I decided to just start driving north. There must be tons of cheap motels nearby I reasoned. (You know the roadside ones that look seedy, with one of those red flashing “vacancy” signs? I’d never been in one, but I assumed they couldn’t cost that much. Right?) Soon I found those motels, but instead of “vacancy” they all also flashed “No”. As I kept driving through the dark, the buildings became scarcer, and the road started to climb, at first gradually then sharply in rapid switchbacks. Without warning, thirty minutes up the mountain, it began to snow, hard (yes in Arizona!). I couldn’t go more than 10 miles an hour. I had no idea if things were about to get worse.
What was I doing driving up a mountain road to nowhere in the dark in a snowstorm? I wanted pull to the side of road and study the map, but not only did I have no signal - it felt unsafe to get near the edge in the dark. Should I go back? No… Not to mention the impossibility of turning around on the steep slippery roads, I was now an hour outside of a town where I knew there was nothing affordable. Go forward? What choice did I have?
Several hour later, after 11pm, I finally found the kind of motel I was looking for near the south rim of the Grand Canyon. There was no going back to see my friends the next day. I was now definitely on on my own, and still without a plan.
~~~
One year ago… how strange a thing time is. That night feels like a different lifetime. I’ve tasted so much more of life this year than I had in my entire adulthood before. For all of it, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude. This year has opened up so much for me: so much of it unexpected, so much of it unplanned.
After a decade of meticulous plotting, carefully crafted choices meant to demonstrate my cunning, and which I thought would please all the right people, but which culminated in serious of spectacularly stupid mistakes, I felt beyond saving. As I thought about the future, on the one hand, I was too tired to plan. On the other hand, I intuited that putting myself into a situation without any of the old guardrails might help me discover how limited my old views of the world had been, and in so doing offer me a possibility for fuller life beyond my current comprehension.
So much of that has turned out to be true. The road has been a constant, if not always gentle teacher. I am not the same person who set off from Sedona a year ago; I hope and believe that has been mostly for the better.
And yet, so much that I hoped the road would teach me still has felt out of reach, especially: “What’s next?”
~~~
I know other people in my life are also aware it’s been a year. Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting an increasing number of oblique (and sometimes not so oblique) questions like, “So… how much longer are you planning to travel?” or “No pressure, but have you given any thought to what’s next?” or my favorite, “How much longer do you plan for this to go on?”
Sometime it feels as if the questioners fear that I’ve gone crazy, and without an intervention (right now!) I might slide into such an intractable resistance to ever re-joining the conventional working world that it’s only a matter of time until I go full Christopher McCandless and die in the Alaskan wilderness or become a full-time hobo riding the rails.
I joke. Sort of. I know these questions come in part from a place of love. I know too, they cut so deep because they give voice to my own doubts. I struggle with these same questions internally, ALL THE TIME:
“Am I doing the right thing? Does this still make sense? Has the journey taught me all it’s meant to? Am I fully taking advantage of this unique opportunity or am I wasting it? What would it mean for me to finish this well? What would ensure this period of my life really meant something?”
Sometimes, I can get so worked up by these questions that I withdraw from the world to think alone for hours on end. I imagine choosing one path, then obsess over all the ways that choice could be wrong. So, I switch, and I imagine taking a different one, but then I find I cannot help but obsess on how option two will keep me from some other goal I think I should be pursuing too. Inevitably, I make no thoughtful decisions, and feel completely overwhelmed. Sometimes, like that first night, I get lucky. Other times, I shut down and turn to “productively” spending my time by watching prestige TV, reading in depth stories about the pervasive corruption in the Trump’s universe, texting friends, or scrolling for hours on end through Instagram.
Of course, deep down, I know when I do this I’m being avoidant, and that I’m actually caught up in a shame cycle. It’s not lost on me how unique of a gift it is to have the resources and freedom to be able to go on an adventure like this. Sometimes, I feel shame for having used this privilege and still not fully figured out my life. And then in thinking that I can feel fear that the whole thing was actually a careless, hedonistic, and reckless thing to do. Others much more worthy than me would kill for the opportunities I had and threw away. Moreover, it’s not infrequent as of late for me to find out about some former colleague and acquaintance who’s since been promoted or made a small fortune while I was “finding myself.” Will I wake up one day to find I sabotaged my future?
I feel like perhaps I’m being over-dramatic. It’s not like I’m stuck in these doubts all the time. Sometimes, I feel completely at peace about this ambiguity. Such are the mysteries of the mind. Moreover, in the last two months, I’ve done quite a bit. I’ve explored six National Parks, made several new soul friends, connected with many family members in profound ways, learned new skills, and felt many moments of wonder and peace. But more and more, my self-doubts about “what’s next” have been leading me to feel adrift, write less, and hide myself emotionally from the people I expect will be disappointed in me.
This week after yet another night spent endlessly debating alone in my mind, “what’s next?” I found no answers. So, having no better idea, I put away my phone, sat on the floor, closed my eyes, and tried to meditate without any app or script.
At first, my mind refused to be still. I felt awash in my questions, overwhelmed by my indecision. But then, from nowhere, and for no discernible reason, I found myself seeing my fears as though they were people, and I was looking at them from afar. In a voice that was my own I heard myself say: “Oh, hello shame” then: “Oh, hi fear. I see you’ve decided to visit too.”
I felt a momentary clenching in my chest, but just as quickly as it came on it released. I was smiling. Then I was laughing to the empty room. How silly! Looking around my mind, I found they were not alone. Parts of my personality I hadn’t even noticed were missing began to emerge – the part that dreams, that part that plays, that part that laughs, the part that stares at the stars in wonder, and the part that loves to play with puzzles even before I know an answer can be found.
Had I gone crazy? Perhaps.
But what I saw in that moment was it hasn’t been reason, but fear and shame which have been setting the terms on the possible solutions I’ve explored. And in only consulting with them, I’ve been cutting myself off from so many other parts of myself (like creativity and trust) which might have helped me find different ways to go.
In this, I’m not saying that fear is bad and should always be overcome. Fear can protect me from many dangers and reckless selfish decisions; but it alone cannot be a source of creativity, imagination, or connection. Healthy expressions of those are only possible when fear is but one (and not the only) of the perspectives which I consult.
So, did this moment of laughter and epiphany immediately solve all of my questions? Of course not. I still feel very much in the work, but with my vision freed I do see it a new light:
“Am I doing the right thing? Has the journey taught me all it’s meant to? Am I fully taking advantage of the unique opportunities before me? What would it mean for me to finish this well? What would ensure this period of my life really meant something?”
These are not just question about my “sabbatical” (or walkabout as I’m now thinking about it)– these are the fundamental questions of what it means to live a good life.
Perhaps that insight should have made the contemplation of them weightier, but instead, I’m finding freedom in it. I know there is no perfect life or way to navigate it. Why did I think it’d be different for this journey? Seeing this, I feel freed to move back into action knowing that my choices will be imperfect. Moreover, I’m seeing it as a gift: a chance to provisionally answer the big life questions by testing hypotheses about them in this context. In this light, the more mistakes I make, the more I can learn, and the greater my chance of living a life I feel satisfied with when it’s done. The only wrong paths are those which will give me no new data, like choosing to stay in my head, treading old paths that brought me misery, or drifting along without intention.
Seeing the remainder of my journey this way (as a metaphor for life itself) has also freed me to feel more at peace with its eventual end. The question for me now isn’t should I fear what’s next, or can I stretch it out forever, but rather, knowing it will end, how do I want to spend my energy in the time I have left?
And here is my provisional answer: with intention in all I do, a heart full of gratitude, prioritizing my creativity, willingness to make and learn from my mistakes, space to experience new things, surrounded by beauty, and connected in love to others as they are (not as I want them to be).
What does this have to do with my walkabout, and what might it look like specifically, you ask?
For now, I’ve decided it means publicly affirming my goal of seeing ALL 62 US national parks. I do not believe that checking each park off the list is what will make the journey worthwhile, but I do believe that the organizing frame of it will bring me to places I wouldn’t otherwise explore, and that it creates a container in which I can live out the values I’m trying to embody in novel ways. It also means I’m setting a deadline on myself to complete this work by summer’s end. By limiting the amount of time I’m giving myself, I believe it will encourage me to get out of the drift, and be more intentional in how I use this time. Once I’ve seen them all, I will write a book about the journey and sell my photographs. And lastly, while I plan to continue to invest in businesses for myself (as my former jobs trained me to do), I plan shift my vocational focus toward helping others grow, most likely by first pursuing a graduate degree in psychology or holistic counseling.
Will this be exactly how my future plays out? Of course not. Already in the week since this plan began to coalesce I see how the corona virus’ spread could make it potentially impossible for me to see many of my remaining parks in my desired time frame. But who knows what next week will bring.
So what’s next? Stepping into that uncertainty, with conviction about my principles, and assurance that things won’t play out exactly as I imagine … that’s what’s next.
Note: all images in this post are from Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona and were taken in January of 2020.