Shoestring Soul Searching #10: USA

Yes, I went back to the States. No, I didn’t stay. There was an alumni reunion in New York for my master’s program, and on top of the intangible benefit of getting to see friends in NYC I figured I should do some serious networking at this reunion.

The hero’s time-out

I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this trip though. It felt odd returning to New York in the middle of my travels, and I now understand why: it breaks the classic hero’s journey arc. In that arc, you don’t get to come home until you’ve figured everything out. Imagine The Odyssey but with Odysseus coming home to Ithaca to chill for a week in the middle of his 20-year wandering. Or the Lion King with Simba banished from the Pridelands, only to return a few months later to rent an Airbnb in nearby Weehawken, New Jersey.

But stories are stories, and real life is real life. Real life rarely fits a neat arc, and modern air travel means you can be deep in a jungle having a spiritual awakening but join your friends for brunch in the West Village a day later. Convenient, but the mystique of distance is gone.

Wise perspective came as usual from Tiff. She told me to look at this trip through the lens of integration. I have my traveling, wandering life and I have the life I left behind. They used to exist in separate worlds, but going home in the middle of everything forces them to blend into one cohesive life. Sort of like when your high school friends meet your college friends and the cognitive dissonance makes your head explode.

Explaining to people back home what I’m doing was a very helpful exercise. Maybe that’s what integration means. You carry a story in your head, but it sounds different saying it out loud to the universe. I’m grateful to everyone in New York who was willing to hear my story, and to all of you who continue to read this newsletter and maybe even occasionally tell me what you think. My journey feels richer by getting to narrate it to you.

Insomniacs Anonymous

After bouncing across the Pacific a few times, my jet lag is at historic levels. I’m asleep when I want to be awake, awake when I want to be asleep. If you’ve ever had trouble sleeping, you can relate to the soul-crushing 3:00am moment: lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and dreading the work presentation / job interview / tap dance recital / Grammy speech / whatever you have to do the next day that you’ll bomb because you’ll be exhausted.

There’s an idea I’ve heard attributed to Alcoholics Anonymous: for things to start getting better, you have to give up hope that things will ever get better. Sounds paradoxical, but at its core it’s a statement about control: your need for control is preventing you from being in the mindset for change. It’s an idea as old as time, from Zen Buddhism (“He who seeks will not find”) to modern psychology (radical acceptance in dialectical behavior therapy).

Back in the 3:00am darkness, I’ve begun applying this. I lie there and believe all my worst fears coming true: I won’t sleep tonight. My eyes will be wide open when that dreaded first light filters in. I will screw up that important thing today. The longer I sit with these fears, the more I accept them. And somewhere along the way…I doze off.

This doesn’t always work, because I haven’t mastered giving up control. But if I can reach that crucial point, I will fall asleep. Of course, there’s a catch here: using this technique as a method for falling asleep means you’re still trying to control the outcome. You can’t fool your own brain into giving up while retaining a hidden sliver of hope. You must genuinely believe your situation is beyond repair. Our minds are tricky like that.

Into the woods

My last U.S. stop was a timber farm two hours north of Seattle. Why a timber farm? Fair question. I’ve mentioned experimentation in earlier newsletters, and this was my boldest experiment yet - combining an interest in agriculture & forestry with the chance to work with my hands. I wanted unfamiliar settings and challenges to shake my thinking loose.

Life on the farm has a consistent rhythm. Wake up and warm your hands over tea. Work until it gets too cold. Break for lunch. Work again until it gets too cold. Gather firewood. Break for dinner. Light the wood stove. Read. Fall asleep at 10. Repeat. There’s always more wood to measure, saw, and stack. After a few days I smelled like a human pine cone, which I was ok with.

I wish I could say the experience left me with some sweeping revelation, like I’m ready to give up city life forever, but the reality is more nuanced. I treasured the solitude and simplicity but began to miss the city bustle. Working without screens does wonders for your mental health but eventually you do start wondering if anyone’s texted you. Learning new skills is invigorating but work also becomes more fun once you’re good at it.

I realized I don’t want A or B. I want both. Maybe “I want everything” is a silly conclusion, but I think proportion of time matters. Let’s say I’m a 70:30 city vs. farm guy and a 60:40 established skill vs. new skill guy. If I know that about myself, I can pursue a life that matches those ratios. What do you think? Is there another approach I’m missing?

One last thing, it was beautiful out there. Fresh air hits different on a cold Pacific Northwest morning in an old-growth forest. The towering native Douglas firs are majestic, almost intimidating. We joke about tree huggers but from what I can tell, trees aren’t asking for hugs. They’re asking for reverence.

Stay rooted,

Bryan