Ever since I came back from traveling, I’ve been trying to get more involved in things. Whenever I return from a long trip, something like this happens. Travel is, if not a rebirth, then perhaps a cleanse, like a detox regimen or a colonoscopy prep. You end up making plans to become a better person, the person you want to be but haven’t been able to fully nail down just yet because life keeps pulling you one way or another. When you’re freshly back, your old environment seems renewed, and you feel like you, too, can get a new start. So you put your plan into action.
The more I think about it, the more travel really does seem like a colonoscopy. I had my first one ever last year, and after fasting for 24 hours and evacuating everything inside me, I remember thinking, “Now I will finally start to eat more vegetables.” I even went out and bought salad dressings—three different kinds—in preparation for the salads I would soon begin making. Yes, I thought, I will begin to eat salads like most normal people do, especially most adult normal people.
But in the end, only one salad was partially eaten, only one salad-dressing bottle opened. This is at least the 5th time in my life that I’ve repeated this exact process. Hope springs eternal.
Sometimes friends of mine who have two little kids will invite me to dinner, and they will all have salads in advance. The little boy and girl, ages almost 6 and almost 3, happily pop cherry tomatoes into their mouths and nibble on lettuce like cute little rabbits. I will usually focus on wine during this uncomfortable, shameful time. The truth is that I want to eat the thing on the plate that tastes the best, and I want to eat it over, and over, and over again. That thing is not salad.
Anyway, my plan this time around after returning from travel has been to try to engage with the external world more often—the one outside my house. Because when I’m not traveling, I spend a lot of time sitting around, like some kind of opposite man when compared to my traveling self. I take some walks, sure, and I go to the gym, and I putz around the yard. But I spend a lot of time reading and watching TV, or just being on my phone. I rarely go anywhere, see anyone, even on weekends.
But already within the last 30+ days that I’ve been back, I’ve taken a couple of friends out to dinner, and I’m taking an online course in mindful leadership, and I went to a brewery, where I had two beers and a fun conversation with a brother and sister who were both over six feet tall (he, considerably so). I even went on a date recently, my first one in over two years.
The brewery where I met the tall siblings was having a 10-year anniversary party, and as part of it they had live glass-blowing and tattoo artists in case anyone wanted to get an impromptu tattoo, which struck me as a really bad thing to have in a bar. I left after two beers to make sure I didn’t wake up with a face tattoo.
In the online leadership course, at one point we did an exercise that involved hugging yourself, a deficit I’d initially hoped to resolve through dating. I had a hard time picturing big-time CEOs like Elon Musk and Tim Cook practicing hugging themselves—they probably have full-time huggers on staff—another benefit of being the boss, I guess, like free parking, private jets, and an average $8,076 per hour wage. But I think this is more of an introductory leadership course for people who are more interested in being nice to themselves and others than in leading. So we did some self-hugging. Personally, I thought it felt nice to be nice to me for a change.
My latest adventure was just this last weekend. I went to nearby Theodore Wirth Park to look at early spring flowers. On my work calendar, I’ll often put encouraging notes to myself to try to get me out of the house, and so I scheduled a “Go to Theo Wirth and look at early spring flowers” meeting. But then, coincidentally, a coworker texted me that there was a big outdoor event at Theo Wirth featuring food and bikes and music, all ending at a brewery. So we did that, and I forgot to look for flowers, and we drank beer in the sun, which later led to me taking a long nap. At the event, my friend had a burger and a salad. I had chicken wings.
Leave a comment