6/12/23
Here’s the problem I’ve been running into: between the accident last year and needing to be in Chicago for work over the summer, an awful lot of my time over the past six months has been spent *not* traveling. I’m still in places I don’t live, but it's mostly flipping between the same two spots: my parents' house in Grand Rapids and my friends’ place in Chicago.
The stillness had some benefits. I bought a new motorcycle, and had the time to kit myself out with new gear without rushing. I’ve spent a lot of time with friends and family in Chicago and Grand Rapids. My body ecovered.
There are downsides, too. There’s no excitement from being in new cities. The winter was really, really cold. The entire time, I was in places that weren't mine--not even in the tenuous way that a vacation rental is. And it's awfully lonely moving around all the time. I didn’t handle those downsides well. My mental health took a nosedive. I was suicidal one afternoon. It was bad.
At first, I thought it was from the stillness. I found myself thinking back again and again to 2019--the first year I spent nomadic. I rolled out of bed jonesing for one more day without any plans like a smoker who quit a week ago. Just another drag, a few hours of relief. This is the last one I swear.
I thought moving on would be the cure. Too much of my time was dominated by those cities, and I needed to push back against their gravity. It reminded me of seeing Against Me! play in Gainesville in late 2019. The lead singer, Laura Jane Grace, grew up in Gainesville, and talked on stage about the nostalgia of coming back every once in a while. She remarked that it’s always wonderful to visit. She even thought about moving there as an adult, but didn’t. “You can never go back, you know,” she said. I latched onto her words as soon as I heard them. Years later, they still hung over me. Even without a permanent spot, I was inching towards Chicago again, but hesitant because I thought that I can't go back.
Over lunch breaks and idle time, while walking to get groceries and laying in bed trying to fall asleep, I fantasized about getting laid off from work. Maybe at 3:15 I’d get a chat message from my boss asking me to join a zoom call. By 4pm I could be out the door and headed south for warmer weather. I even thought about quitting again, to speed up the process. I know it was a stupid idea and that I may never have the opportunities to travel and work like I do now. I can't stress enough that I was not doing ok. I wasn’t thinking ok.
Simmering just under the surface was the real problem: I hadn’t made room for myself in my life. My parents’ and my friends in Chicago are warm and welcoming and I love being around them, but their spare bedroom will only ever be a spare bedroom. My life was happening in the Midwest and I wasn’t really there. On top of that, I have all the stress of not being entirely sure where I'll be staying two months in the future, without any of the benefits.
It turns out that I want to be in Chicago a lot of the time, and occasionally I need to be there. I want to ride my bicycle around the city again. I want to try touring on it. I want to have walls that I can paint and a kitchen I can cook in where all the pots and pans are exactly where I would put them. I can never go back to those first few months living off my motorcycle in 2019, and acting like I might just ride off into the sunset any day now isn't working anymore. I need to live where my life is happening. I want to live where my life can keep happening.
Besides, Laura is still right. I can't go back to the Chicago I left. It has changed, and I have changed, and the life I’ll build there won’t look much like the one I packed up four years ago. I’m planning on having a home base there, but still being on the road for six months out of the year.
Anyway, I made an offer on a condo today. I’ll keep you updated.
Update: the offer got accepted. I’m moving in soon.
