So, what am I doing from here? I’ve spent the past two months exploring the US, and I’m ever thankful for that fact. I have been to 38 states, and in a perfect world I visit all 50 before I settle down, or whatever you call it. Yet it becomes more apparent the more I travel that it is not where you are that matters, but what you are doing while you are there.
Sure, what I'm doing might mean living the life of a local, but for someone like me, this has gotten old. I set out two years ago to live my life differently and experience what others experience. I saw my life hurtling down a singular track, one where I would never be exposed to anything different from my professional peers. Some people travel because they are impatient. I travel because I want to open my eyes. After two years though, the starry-eyed wonder of simply visiting a new place has worn off since it is now my life; the way I live. It is almost time for me to travel in a more substantive matter.
Sitting in an office building, I dreamed of the nomadic lifestyle, of being able to pick up and move somewhere completely new, starting a life from scratch. I’ve done that, a few times now. It’s exhilarating and exciting, but once it becomes the status quo, it loses the ability to be as exhilarating and exciting as it once was. You need a baseline to compare it to. I have lost that baseline, and if I want to continue to pursue adventure, I need to seek destinations that are bigger, badder, and more obscure. Am I interested in this? Of course. I’d love to go to Nepal and Antarctica. But as someone that is used to being exposed to new environments he real question, when it comes down to it, is what will I do when I’m there?
I’ve learned a lot about myself and how I work over the past two years. Now, I’d like to indulge in creative passions that are constructive and can truly help others. I see the merit of working within society’s framework in a way that I never before appreciated. You can’t change the world even if you want to; you can only do your part to make it a better place. That is something I can get behind. You just need to choose the framework in which you want to make it better.
I have long said that I can’t help others before I help myself—before I get this inexplicable wanderlust out of my system. Well, I can tell you one thing—it’s not out of my system, and I don’t think it ever will be, but I am passing the phase where I want everything to be so carefree and without direction. I have greatly enjoyed that part of my life, and I don’t think I would be able to move forward and confidently build a life that I do want if I didn’t have the ability to free-fall, per se, and build something from scratch. Yet I am prepared to start moving myself towards a constructive life. A life in which I am a member of society, and play a role society dictates I play. Will it be in the same way that I once thought? Almost certainly not.
I still want to spend my young and unattached years exploring and doing things differently, but now I want to do it less for me, and more for others. I am no longer enthused and excited by the prospect of setting off into the great nowhere without any sort of plan. I’ve proved myself to be a capable individual that can handle the challenges that come along with this, but I’ve also come to realize that in the end, there is less you can accomplish with this approach. I’ve known it all along, but there was a period in my life where I could not subscribe to it. That period is approaching an end, and I look forward to the next step.
I’m excited about spending the winter in Steamboat Springs, because I think it will be a great place for me to find out what's in store for me next. All of the thoughts I just vomited onto paper will be with me as I begin this season, and I will no longer be open and willing to flit off to the next destination (or so I am telling myself)]. I have months in advance to plan, and know that after this season is done, it is time to move on and not be concerned with where I am, but with what I am doing there.