Welcome Back

It's been a while, but I'm jumping back onto the blog. After mercilessly pounding out a blog almost every day for 5 months of touring the country, I jettisoned the entire enterprise in favor of...nothing. I thought blogging was for the people out there reading, but someone pointed out to me recently how integral it becomes to the life of the writer. Thoughts get sorted out, days understood more clearly. It creates a rhythm.

Like any good blogger, I just sold my car and have no transportation. On top of that, I'll be finishing up my two part-time jobs on Tuesday of next week, ensuring that at the time of my friend PJ's wedding on July 21st, I will be unemployed. There's a lot of glory in these sorts of actions. The average American can't even think about being this daring.

People often ask if I'm independently wealthy. Is that how I managed to romp around the country on a five month road trip, without working, on little more than saved-up waiter's tips? The simple answer is no. I find ways not to spend my money. I probably could have put a down payment on a house, if I wanted to stay in one place a long time and had a steady job, but instead elected for 5 months on the open road and no annoying mortgage payment. It was just a choice.

Our culture discourages people from taking risk-laden adventures by promising more safe, respectable leisure activities than have ever been known in human history. You can run on a treadmill, watching television and listening to your iPod, next to ten other people doing the same thing, or you could run around a lake and feel the real world around you. It binds us to safe, respectable life with debt, retirement plans, mortgages, children, and 2 weeks' paid vacation. We get so caught up in the responsibilities and financial worries of the moment that our natural, earthly element becomes restricted to the stuff of dreams. I only do what I do because I think dreams and reality can be one and the same. I refuse to sit around and talk about what sorts of things I should do with my life. Instead, I find ways to do them. You can too.