Returning Home

Thoughts on Wrapping Up a Little Trip

I guess the trip started the way it began, in my truck and on 4th Avenue. A good spot to start and end but also a strange one. I’m done with the first road trip, yet am unsettled, with so much left to write, for this newsletter and elsewhere. I guess that was the whole point of it, wasn’t it? It all just happened so quickly, a series of twelve days made a blur of roads and green and sun and ending with a night of cold rain. 

I wandered around California beaches I didn’t know existed, found the dunes of f/64 photographers, I sought out snowy plovers, found new waves to surf, met many new people, learned so many stories, some of quiet towns that almost inevitably, many told me, would end up blown up and overcrowded, like almost every hushed haven in this big state. There was so much done, seen, and eaten, and there’s little else I feel I can do but hope to jot some of it down before my goldfish brain sees something sparkly in my head and I meander down that stream instead.

It’s nice to be back, to sleep in my bed, to have the time to plan and write again. Yet, there is little that I am returning back to. So much has shifted, and all intentionally on my part. The day to day activities I have to do, and can do, are all so different. I have my quiet apartment my friends, but time is a new beast now, mine to do with what I please, to make happen how I see fit the work that will take up most of the rest of my life—and that much free and chosen time is a lot more daunting than I expected it to be. Or maybe that’s just a dramatic way of seeing it. Simply I can say that things are new back home. That things, as they always do, have changed. Just this time, I’ve been the catalyst of it. While the change is welcome, regardless if we chose it or not, there’s always a slight element of it that is unsettling, like walking on a cloudy night in a vast and open field.

The money is steadily leaving my bank account, which is as good motivation as any to continue writing. But really, what I’m trying to say, now returning home after being away, after leaving my job, is that here I am, in the thick of change, and I can’t wait to get used to it. 

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Seeing as there is a lot I want to write about from my trip, beyond the work I’ve done and am seeking publications for (which if anyone has any pubs they think I would like, please share them!), I’m going to start writing twice a week, with a bit more of a solid schedule. 

I’ll be posting on Wednesdays and Sundays from now on. They will be the same little meandering essays, for a short while mostly about this trip, and the one upcoming trip to Oregon. Once the road trip stories are finished, I’ll be continuing back to the regular essays on social and environmental critiques filtered through my daily life.

If there is anything any of you think I should write about, or want me to write about, let me know! As well, if you have any projects, or places you think might like my writing, don’t hesitate to email me!

And finally, please share my newsletter with anyone you think would like it — your homies, your homies homies, your family, your bird nerd friends, your ecology buffs, your surfer bro, your crush, your bongo burger cashier, your mechanic, your flightless bird, your local barn owl or swallow, your coworkers, your enemies, your house plant. The more eyes on this little piece of the Internet the more joy it brings me to share! For real!