What’s all this hullabaloo about? (Full Version)

Family, Friends, and Probably Some Internet Strangers,

Last October I quit my job of thirteen years, sold my house of ten, and purged most of my possessions, pocketing the profit to take myself on a self-imposed sabbatical. This has caused some of you to take notice, variously calling it a Vision Quest, a Walkabout, a Journey of Self-Discovery, a Rumspringa, or a Poor Decision. None of these descriptions quite fit, though,  and I’ve had a hard time coming up with one that does. From the outside, it’s easy to see this abandonment of all worldly responsibility as sudden and rash, as though one day at work I threw my hands in the air and announced, “Fuck it! I’m out of here!” after enduring one team meeting too many bloated with plastic buzzwords and overwrought enthusiasm for the “exciting changes” happening within the organization. That account isn’t far from the truth, but to describe the leaving of job and home as rash or sudden or even brave misses the mark. The “sudden” exit had been in the works for years, in fact, and was the result of far more important changes that aren’t as easy to see as a fresh end-date in the work history section of a resume.

Over fifteen years ago while still in college I read two books that had a particular impact on me and continued relevance to me now: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon and Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Both describe each author’s respective journey, different in detail but similar in theme, to find something vital and missing (hot tip: himself). Least Heat-Moon drove across the United States in a van with a self-imposed rule requiring he travel only on non-interstate roads, stopping in small towns and the forgotten corners of the country to talk to people and learn from them, to piece together a philosophy of life and regroup from his recent divorce.  Pirsig embarked on an extended motorcycle trip, tracking clues left behind by a missing and mysterious acquaintance named Phaedrus (spoiler and hot tip: Phaedrus was a lost part of the author). These books jumped out at me, although at the time I read them I couldn’t have told you why. They spoke of a road I may someday need to walk—or drive—down myself, maybe even a road I was already on but didn’t realize it.

Fifteen or so years later— last week— I finished reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Like Blue Highways and Zen, these accounts, one a personal memoir of the author’s thousand-mile-plus backpacking odyssey along the Pacific Crest Trail, the other an inquiry into the life of a young man found starved to death in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992, also document journeys of self-discovery, perilous quests to find wholeness. Unlike the two books I’d read during college, in Wild and Into the Wild, I realized I no longer saw any of these seekers—Least Heat-Moon, Pirsig, Strayed, or McCandless—as pointing to a voyage on which I had yet to embark. I saw them as fellow veterans of the trail.  In the past year and arguably the twenty years preceding it, I’ve been on an expedition, albeit over a different kind of terrain.

On the last day of December 2016, a woman I’d been dating and I broke up. The loss was cataclysmic to me and represented not just a loving and promising relationship that shouldn’t have failed and yet did, but also a failed way of life. It was the inevitable culmination of twenty discontented years of trying to live as though I didn’t have something eating away at me, twenty years of trying to build a life and relationships on a cracked foundation unable to support the weight. This might surprise those who know me superficially as cheerful and fun and given to wearing ridiculous outfits on stage. Those qualities, while genuine, also functioned in my life as relieving distractions from the turbulent undercurrents within rather than as the full expression of who I was.  After the breakup I knew if I were ever to have a chance at being content with my life, if I ever hoped to be in a real, lasting, intimate relationship, I had to get to the root of things. I had to find and heal the wound.  I had to figure my shit out. I had to. That desperation to change launched me into a vision quest of my own last January. The quest didn’t involve climbing a mountain or hiking a thousand miles or wandering the country in an RV or on a motorcycle. It wasn’t backpacking across Europe or into South America, moving to a big scary city, or retreating to a cabin in the woods. This journey to a new way of being hasn’t had a neat end-point that would easily make for a memoir, and certainly didn’t take a form that would translate well into a movie. But I have made the journey. I found and dressed the wound, and everything is different now because of it.

Leaving job and home this past October came as a result of the healing and not as the catalyst for it. That’s why, when I think about whatever it is I’m doing right now, I resist calling it a vision quest or a walkabout. In fact, the prospect of yet more wandering in life in search of something missing feels as painful as it does unnecessary. I’m still pulled to do more, though, like it’s not quite time to go home. There’s something left to do and learn that’s part of all this. Maybe it’s to say one final goodbye to the spiritual wilderness I’d found myself in for much of my adult life. Maybe it’s to learn how to follow my intuition and understand what I want and need in the absence of responsibilities, to reinforce recent lessons that insist, “Just do what you want!” or “You do you, Boo Boo.” Maybe I’m not as whole as I think; I’ve certainly had my share of self-doubt throughout the year. Maybe it’s a victory lap. Maybe I’ve seen God, but haven’t entered the promised land. I don’t know. When I wake up tomorrow on January 1, 2018, I won’t have a plan. There is no agenda or itinerary. I’ll get into my car and decide on a direction to drive. For all I know I’ll return to Utah the next day, back to a life of beautiful details and stability with people I love, and all that was needed was to make the gesture of adventuring out into the world, to declare the intent, and it would be enough. I guess we’ll find out.

A number of you asked me to set up a blog to document my travels. This is that blog. It’s not a travel blog, though, not exclusively. You’ll also receive musings, essays, confessions, and other miscellany. The main criteria for content here is a solid ‘yes’ to the question,  “Would I want to read this?” The blog is for me , in the end, and a format through which I can continue to synthesize thoughts and experiences, and I’d like to share it with you. This means there will likely be: armchair philosophy, armchair psychology and neuroscience, provocative statements, excerpts from journal entries, stories from my past, pictures, photographs, questions, guest posts, jokes and ideas I find funny, occasional swear words, evangelism, analyses of books I’m reading or have read, doubts, certainties, thoughts on religion and spirituality, unnecessarily strong opinions about karaoke, poor grammar, poor taste, self-indulgence in both content and form, messiness, far too many commas, and maybe, maaaaybe travel logs.  I also want to share some experiences of the last year with you.

I’ve wondered whether or not creating this blog is too much, whether it’s making a big to-do about a fairly common human experience, and too self-disclosing and too public, like Ally Sheedy dumping out her purse in front of her fellow delinquents in The Breakfast Club. I keep returning to the fact, though, that I did learn something vital last year that has changed everything in my life, and I want to tell the story.  So, in the hopes I can reach people like myself, I plan to dig and share deep. I won’t promise professionalism, but I do promise enthusiasm. I don’t know how frequently I’ll post, but man, I’ve got shit I want to say. So, to answer the question in the title of this post, “What is all this hullabaloo about?”

I have no idea. Yet.

Welcome to this little corner of the internet, my friends!