I’ve always said that there is no better way to deal with a challenge or a problem that you’re having than to get into a vehicle and drive away from it. There are other ways, of course. Airplanes, for example, will take you away from your problems much more rapidly. Boats will do it more slowly, but with the advantage that, unless your problems can swim, you’re probably safe from them.
Once, when I visited Peru about 20 years ago, I took a bus, a taxi, a boat, and an airplane all in one day. Even the stickiest of problems couldn’t keep up with me then. So, no matter what your own personal problems are, I suggest—at least as a first step—that you get into a vehicle and move away from them at a high rate of speed.
There is a kernel of truth there. Physically removing yourself from a location or situation can have an effect as powerful, though perhaps not as lasting, as the psychological. But it can be a good first step, depending on the problem you’re going through. Sometimes you have to take yourself out of a physical situation to really gain insight into how it’s affecting you inside.
When I’m traveling and working remotely, there’s also what I’ve come to conceive of as a kind of unreality, maybe because while it’s not a vacation, it’s not entirely disconnected from the vacation experience. There’s some semblance of vacation and all that entails: the newness of the scenery and your experiences leave you in a world that feels like a partial fiction. And so your problems kind of shimmer into the background, not entirely gone, but not entirely there, either.
But when you’re at home, in your house/apartment/etc., there’s no denying your reality, whatever it may be. You’re inside those walls. This is your life. So maybe within those walls you sometimes participate in various unrealities to get away, traveling within your own mind with booze, or drugs, shopping like mad on Amazon and forgetting what you’ve gifted yourself when it finally shows up, watching 12 hours of sports per day, or suckling from the dopamine tap of social media. It’s all related, and I’ve done it all, and if you’ve done one, don’t kid yourself that you’re above another, despite the feedback society at large gives you about (particularly) one over another (Thank you for your purchase, America!). We are all in this life problem together, and none of us know a goddamn thing about it for certain. Anyone who tells you different is selling something; that’s why this blog is free. Because any advice I can offer about how to live is almost certainly wrong.
Still, it’s gratifying to see that I’ve picked up a steady following since I began writing here just two years ago. Most visitors visit on the day of or the day after I post something, but I get visitors every day (the site tracks clicks, but doesn’t tell me who). Sometimes I’ll get just a few visitors, but the site also tells me how many times a (de-identified) visitor clicks on a story, and very often I’ll see that a person will read several posts, and a few times a month or more I’ll have a visitor who reads 20 or 30 or even 40 posts, which seems amazing.
I’m always waiting for these people to reach out to me, to say, “Hello, Adam. This is so-and-so Mr. Big and we’d like to offer you a book contract so that you don’t have to have a real job anymore.” Or maybe it’s, “Hello Adam, this is Ms. Attractive Lady, and wow, can I just say that I like your polluted mind and now we are in love.” But I guess Mr. Big and Ms. Attractive Lady are biding their time, because I haven’t heard anything yet. Even if one of them just clicked “like,” and it said “Liked by Mr. Big,” I think it would be enough.
It’s been a long week and it’s only Wednesday. This morning I couldn’t believe it. I texted some friends that it felt like at least Friday, if not like some unnamed 8th day, like Dunday or Dunderday—that day where you’re just barely holding on to your sanity, where you’re absolutely done. I meant to write here about what happened this past weekend, when I went on what I would say was the second worst drive I’ve been on in my life—and I have driven a lot of roads. But I’ll have to write about that next time.
Today I’m at the end of the world, or at least the road, on highway 1, Kirk Creek Campground, Los Padres National Forest. Two miles north or so the road ends where it slipped into the ocean two years ago. It’s sunny here and 60, and I’m staring out at the ocean with suntan lotion on my freckled skin. It had been gray here for a few days, and yesterday it rained heavily all day at a pace unlike about anything I’ve seen in the Midwest. The winds seemed to come from everywhere, down from the mountains, in from the sea, 50 mph at times, the camper shaking, the rain ceaseless for 16 hours straight. It’s those days where you’re trapped in a small camper, where the outdoors are no longer your living room, when things can get a little bleak, and you just have to hold on a little longer, until Dunderday comes (Cue CCR).
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