A hundred thousand hours late - #144

A mantra and a message.

Whew, I felt good writing this week’s essay, but just a few maintenance things first:

1) I’ve got room for a couple new clients, if you know someone in need of brand/copy work. Feels a little weird to cross-pollinate here, but I’ve got a baby and bills, so here we are.

A little on my career outside of this jaunty little newsletter: I was Head of Content at Headspace, VP of Content under UnitedHealth Group Ventures, ran content for a very cool NDA project that I swear I was good at, and I’ve written for many health/wellness/sporting brands like Thrive Market, Ro, Modern Fertility, Nike, Rapha, Almond ObGyn, Everlywell, Born This Way Foundation, etc. etc. I’ve built brand guidelines, re-built them, improved UI, even written entire apps, produced podcasts, won awards for editorial, and ran entire content teams. I also just love writing copy. Plus my background pre-content is production and project management at big agencies like BBDO and Crispin. 

If you know someone who should know me, here’s my website.

2) I’m updating the Shangrilogs Gift Guide as we read, and I’d like to hear from you. What are you asking for this year? What gift are you giving that you’re like “oh I nailed this”? (I know we all want a vacation and healthcare but please share practical ideas.)

3) I’m taking next Sunday, November 24 off. See you freebies in December.

Now, let’s get on with it!

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Like most teenagers, I lied to my parents. There was the classic of saying I was at one place when I was at another, or saying I was with one person when I was with someone else. But mostly, I lied about being alone. I said I was at a friend’s house when I was at the park, riding my bike by myself. I said I was meeting a friend at the movies when I was just driving around, listening to music. I wanted to be by myself, with myself, moving through time and space, seeking a solitude I couldn’t find at home. 

I drove a ‘95 Mustang. It had the Cobra emblems, and a modified dual exhaust, but its guts were the basic horse right down to the automatic transmission. It was $5000 off the lot, and it was the car of my dreams. I drove the dirt roads to school. I drove the back roads to Amish country. I drove the freeways to downtown. I rotated cassette tapes and then had a stereo installed and rotated CDs. I would make my selection, roll down the driveway, and turn onto the country road, announcing the exit from home like a rocket launch. “We’re moving through time and space now,” I’d say to no one but myself and the horizon. 

Early on in W3’s infancy, I caught myself muttering that as I segued between chores. “I’m moving through time and space, I’m moving through time and space.” I hadn’t thought of it in years, decades even. Then, all eager flesh, it had been my demarcation of freedom. Now, it had become my reminder that I was fine, that everything was fine, that I was handling things fine. I caught myself saying it as I carried the diapers to the laundry, then took the clothes out of the dryer to the bedroom, then took the humidifier out of the bedroom to fill in the kitchen and so on. Saying it gave me a sense of control, even a sense of identity to some degree. This wasn’t autopilot, this was decision-making, and I could choose the next turn — even if being in the kitchen lit up the next chore like a quest in a video game. 

Soon, I started saying it again in the truck, when I would leave without the baby, when I would be by myself. I waited until I was past the avalanche field, past the town hall, past the one-room post office, and out on the open road to say it, to really feel that my decisions were my own, that I was in control. 

Driving has always felt like that to me, like I’m out in the stars, the galaxies open to me. And like any good captain, I’m careful about my crew. I mentioned it in my wedding vows, that Ben was a good driver. A very good driver, in fact, and you could tell from the beginning he felt the same way about the road, about its freedom and possibilities. About its escape.

Ben and I had only known each other a couple months before our first road trip together. We drove from Santa Monica to McCall, Idaho, some 960 miles for my great aunt’s memorial service. It never occurred to us to fly. Since then we’ve driven thousands of miles through California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. In college I drove nearly the entire Eastern Seaboard several times. We’ve driven across countries and back again. And next week, we’ll load up the car to head to the South of the West (Idaho) to see my parents. 

In the little Forester we’ll pack up the bassinet, the baby, the dog, the cloth diapers, a cooler, a bag of onesies and bibs and various utility cloths, a bag of treats and food and bowls, a bag of clothes and gear and shoes, a bag of snacks, a bag for trash, a roll of dog bags, and probably a few other bags while we’re at it, and we’ll roll out of the driveway some 45 minutes later than we’d hoped to, past the avalanche field, past the town hall, past the one-room post office, and out on the open road to begin the next adventure. We’ll move through time and space together.

It’s a strange thing to move to this very small town without having lived in the region first, without some deeper familiarity with the area. How did you end up here? people ask, curious or suspicious or both. We found it on a map, we say. We have a bookcase full of maps. There’s a guidebook section, an atlas section, a section of brochures and pamphlets collected from various parks and paths. The two of us always chartering a course, Ben with his careful plotting and planning, and me with my left turns and why nots. We are predictable co-pilots if you are looking to cast a caper. 

We talk often about how our home, remote and rugged to most, is the perfect hub: equidistant to deserts and peaks, to cacti and crags. It being difficult to get to is the very thing that makes it easy to get to other difficult to get to places. Some two hours driving from our house is when it begins to feel like home, like we’re in our zone, like we could (with the things we have in the car) hike the rest of the way. We try to be ready, wherever we are, to move through time and space. 

Earlier this week, I got a reply to an email I had written fourteen years ago. I sent the email to a friend on July 22, 2010. It was a benign enough email, asking if he still had a text I’d sent him a year earlier. I was a writer then too, trying to make sure I got the wording exactly right for a story. And he replied over 5,000 days later. 

He and I met in the British Virgin Islands, both working there in our 20s. I’d flown there after graduating from university in North Carolina, and he’d come from Ireland. Or at least he was Irish. We both started our gigs in the off-season, no one else around to care as I swam laps to buoys or he chopped coconuts with machetes. In the many years since we had both left the islands, our lives diverged across continents but ended up looking quite similar: both with new babies, both with homes far from the city, both living on the horizon we’d been eyeing from the beginning, just moving through time and space.

It felt appropriate that someone I’d gravitated toward and never forgot would become exactly who I thought he was then, and even more it felt gratifying to know that I’d done the same, that I’d lived up to the image of myself I was trying desperately to be.

Chanting time and space while carrying laundry was a reminder then, that this relentless hamster wheel of chores and nursing and naps and nappies is only in its cage temporarily. That it feels stationary is an illusion. It is still a wheel, and it can still roll. Even in the cage, all it takes to remind you of the stars and horizon and the open road is a message, traveling through space and time, a hundred thousand hours late.