Fittingly, tonight, my last night on the road before I arrive in San Francisco, I ran out of steam. I spent the day driving to Monterey and then walking along the waterfront. I had lunch at a great little French bakery. I had a couple of beers and an early dinner at a brewery that was more bro-ey than I expected or wanted it to be (guys shouting at the football game on the TV). And then at 5:30, I nodded off on my bed. While I have more than enough things to do and/or focus on (job search, apartment hunting, reading, writing), I’ve been pretty useless since the nap.
While not there yet, I’m trying to contextualize this trip and realizing that there’s no way to sum up the experiences. Soon enough, I’ll be switching from being someone who has been on the road for over fifty days to being someone who recently took a long road-trip around the country. For whatever reason, it loses something when it shifts into history. In the moment, it’s an active story. It’s an interesting elaboration on the answer to the question, “are you in town visiting?” In a few days, it becomes the uninteresting slide show of some dude’s vacation. I guess I didn’t expect it to lose its sheen so quickly.
I’ve sensed this shift coming on for a few days. On Saturday, I tried to write while watching football and felt a lethargy in my soul – the same heaviness I’ve felt on Sundays after a deeply fulfilling weekend. For the past few nights, my sleep has been fitful. I hadn’t anticipated getting attached to this definition of myself. I hadn’t considered that in defining myself in this way (a wayward traveler of sorts) I’d be filling in the gaps for how we traditionally define ourselves (by what we do, our hobbies, our community, and our relationships). While some part of me is ready to settle into a new normalcy, explore my new environment, and establish new routines, some part of me wants to keep going.
I’m trying not to think of this as the end of something – it’s just a shift into a different type of adventure.