Traveling Too Much
This year has been travel-heavy, to say the least. After next week, I’ll have 101 days away from home, with 20-25 more to come before the year is out. I don’t have to travel for my standard work set-up. So why am I doing so much of it?
The reasons this year are easy. Extra work (which I do have to travel for), because we need the money. Sick father-in-law (he’s doing better). Lots and lots of time with fertility doctors in Denver. But the truth is, this near-constant travel has been going on for years, since 2002 when I started freelancing and splitting my time between Boston and San Francisco.
I think how I grew up has something to do with it. I spent months at a time with my grandparents in Seattle (summer) and Mexico (winter), so being nomadic feels normal to me. But it’s tough on my husband and tough on me--always packing or unpacking, always trying to get ahead or catch up from being behind with work and life. What am I getting out of it? Some possible answers:
- The money
- Seeing my friends who are scattered across the country
- Big-city stimulation (our town is so small; sometimes a girl needs good restaurants and shopping)
Or maybe there are more sinister reasons, like:
- I’m not really comfortable in my life
- I can’t slow down because I’m scared of what I might find
I read an article yesterday in Poets and Writers about Christian Wiman, Editor of Poetry (love, love, love Poetry). Talking about his constant movement from place to place, he said: “It was anxiety, too, driving all the travel--the anxiety of the ordinary. You come to think of disruption, disorganization, dislocation, all those things as fuel for your art.”
I’m not sure I’m doing this as fuel for my art, but somehow I feel this--all over the country--is how I’m supposed to live. I’ve always been both scared of and drawn to the ordinary; maybe travel is a way to make difficult an easy, stable marriage (although I have managed that for the most part, but travel certainly makes it harder), a circle of close friends you can do things with whenever you want (vs having to plan around me being in and out of town), days where I have lots of free time to cook and garden and read and write and knit and hike etc. (vs constantly being disrupted, disorganized and dislocated).
I think part of why I want a baby (way, way far down on the list, but still) is to put a stop to this. But I can put a stop to it on my own, too. It’s just that a blank space on my calendar always feels like somewhere in which to squeeze another trip. The detriments, though, are starting to outweigh the benefits. Maybe it’s time to do things differently.
Image Credit: John Picken
