First things first, I must address my absence last week. I took a trip to North Carolina and, despite planning the trip for months, neglected to inform you of my impending absence, because I was planning to still write from the road and send a newsletter out. Instead, I decided at the last minute to let myself have the vacation I was physically already on and miss a week of newslettering, a decision I struggled with until Friday night when I crawled into bed and decided that if I hadn’t sent anything out by then, that I wouldn’t until today.
Every time I go on vacation, I wonder why I don’t do it more often. I wonder if I need bigger change in my life or if I just need smaller change more often. Less moving to a new state every two to three years, more road trips to somewhere different every summer. The same thing happened last year: I convinced myself that I would be happier if I only lived in the place where I was vacationing, as though the geography of the place was the reason I felt suddenly relaxed — not my lack of responsibilities for a week or the fact that being on vacation had distracted me from my phone.
This year was easier to reign myself in, to recognize that although I love the mountains, uprooting my life to settle in the Appalachians isn’t going to make any of my current problems disappear and would, in fact only create new ones. This knowledge didn’t make returning home any easier. Throughout the drive back to Wisconsin, the only thing that propelled me west was knowing I’d see our cat again.
I feel like I’m writing about this all the time: wanting something other than the life I have. Creating a life and then fleeing from it. Craving so much change so desperately that it paralyzes me, preventing me from making even small changes. Satisfaction is often so much easier said than done.
And still, when I walked through the front door and was greeted by the frustrated screams of a lonely cat, I knew there was nowhere else I wanted to be in that moment.
walden vibes
I’ve been trying to think all week
and nothing comes up or out
I either need solitude in the woods
or to never be alone again
head to toe
my bangs are growing out and I
can’t decide if I should cut them again
or let them disappear into the rest
of my split ends
there’s nothing more intimidating
than a forehead, I’m told
but I don’t know
my uncle danny was pretty scary
and he didn’t even have
all of his toes
I guess you could call it fomo
I can’t stop rewatching all the same shows
or showering to escape
my mom says I never wanted
to sleep as a baby
now I don’t want to do anything else
Thank you for your patience as I decided to actually take the vacation I had scheduled. Have a wonderful weekend, regardless of what you have planned. Live, laugh, love ya.