I went, I saw and I drove. Now, I’m back. Gone are my peanut butter and carrot lunches, Goldfish filled snack breaks and endless hours of driving along the Wyoming and South Dakota highways. It was good to be gone but it feels right to be back. I had plenty-o-time to think on the road when I wasn’t avoiding cows in the street, deer in the night or highways that suddenly went from paved to loose rocks.
After my big epic road trip across America — well to Chicago, so like half of America, — I’m back in San Francisco. I finally got to go to Yellowstone, see Mount Rushmore — my new favorite president is Teddy Roosevelt — and play in the Badlands, but not like Sissy and Martin. It was well-worth it. I won’t lie.
I did have pangs of guilt though. It’s this dual-edged sword where here I am with the time to explore and yet I felt guilty for doing it. I am jobless, once again, and trying to figure out how I’m going to survive. Right now I feel like I’m in the endless space of nothingness. I don’t have a job and my sig other is unemployment — and we know how much I appreciate him. When one part of your life is missing you over compensate with the other. I have nothing to over compensate for and thus spend my time worrying over every thing. Literally, everything. So I left. Instead of spending my days in a coffee house looking for jobs and a purpose; I was in a car looking at the mountains of western Wyoming and the sheer awesomeness that is Milwaukee. How did I never know that Milwaukee is such a cool looking city?
Part of my desire to take this trip was to see the parts of America that I never had seen before, and the other half was to live in the moment. To tune out the voice of Rachel-plus-five-years-ahead and let Rachel-living-now have time to feel herself out. I think it worked pretty well. I’m ok with whatever happens next in my life. I mean I kind of have to be. What else am I going to do? Maybe it won’t be how I expected, but that’s part of living in the moment.
