Is This How Normal People Live?

ASTORIA, New York- I have a BFF. His name is Erik. He flies airplanes for major airlines.

We sat next to each other once in sixth grade and that was it: we’ve been close friends ever since. We were line mates on the hockey team. He played first base, I played third. I played bass guitar, he played drums. We traveled through South America, Central America together. He introduced me to the girl who would become my wife in Costa Rica. We go to Bills games together — in Cincinnati a few years ago he got so drunk tailgating that we got kicked out of the stadium five plays into the first quarter. No matter where I am in the world I call him on his birthday. I send him strange gifts that don’t have any indication that they came from me (except for the give away that I’m the only one sending him such gifts). He was the best man at my wedding.

***

He texted me one day saying that he was going to be in ROC and asked if I was going to be around. Hmm…I wasn’t planning on heading back there until things settled down in New York City, but it’s only a half day of travel away. Why not?

I told my kids that they were going to visit their grandparents and we starting hashing out a plan. It was complicated. We had to wait for a bed and futons to be delivered. I had to do some things to make the apartment habitable, we had to be back before Rivka’s birthday on August second. I’m scheduling, rescheduling, moving things around, hoping that things arrive on time, all kinds of things to give myself a stretch of five days in ROC.

Then I asked Erik what his schedule was looking like. He told me what he was doing each day.

Wait, where’s my day?

He was busy with other people — his family, his fiance’s family, this and that — and I couldn’t see how I was going to fit in before I would have to leave. We worked it out and opened up a day to take the kids to a waterpark. That works. Then he cancelled because his brother needed him to help with his job. Fair enough.

I rearranged the days of my visit to be there for the end of his stay. But he had other plans already.

It was too complicated. I called it quits.

We decided to shoot for mid-August — I will fly down to Florida to see his new house. My wife squashed that — she’s starting a new job and doesn’t know if the kids can start school right away.

There was always something — some parameter to dance around, something coming up, something preventing the apparently simple event of a traveler crossing paths with an airline pilot in the place that they both come from.

Is this how normal people live?

I know that the sedentary life is complicated. Anyone who says that life is a book and those who don’t travel only read a single page is an arrogant moron who can’t observe what’s right in front of them. The travel life is the simple life. We may read a lot of pages from the book of life but it’s easy reading, low-brow fluff. What people who stay in one place read is an entangled web of words that churn and burn and revolve around the page. They can’t get on to the next page because what’s right in front of them is complicated as f’ck. There are so many parts to it and pieces to the sedentary life that are in a perpetual state of disarray. There are schedules, timelines, shit breaking and needing fixed, drama, prioritizing one person over another …

I never lived this life. I split at 18. But I now know why travel is often viewed as an escape.

***
I‘m being providing with a glimpse of another way of life here in NYC. But I can enjoy the experience, as I ultimately remain an interloper — an outsider peering in, playing around with a different way of life for a while to learn what I can from it. Getting an apartment, buying furniture, hanging curtains … this is a novelty for me. And I’m kind of enjoying it. Yesterday, I bought an old wooden marble top end table. As I lugged it down the street I thought, wow, I’ve never had something like this before, this is kind of cool.

I’ll put it like this:

It takes a little time to set up a new base of operations. It’s like moving a business into a new office — you blow a few weeks in procurement and set up and then it’s back to business as usual. I’ve done this before — in Taizhou, in Xiamen. I don’t even have a desk to work from right now. I sit with my laptop on the floor. But once these bases of operation are set up they’re set for the next year. Peace.

People need to do a little work sometimes to get what they want. The trick, I suppose, is making that work expand your capacity as a human — to learn something, experience something new, understand something a little better. Without this expansion you’re walking death.

To clear something up:

Bases of operation are neither a compromise between me and my wife nor a compromise between my traveling ways and the ways of family life. No way — I’ve never compromised in my life. They are the best thing for me. Being able to travel at the toss of a hat, collect content, and then have a desk that’s all set up to return to, where I can process and publish is key to being able to continue to do the work that I do.

Continuous, streamline travel is nice … if you don’t want to get any work done.

I like what I do, it’s what makes me happy, and I want to set myself up in a situation to optimize this sense of fulfillment as much as possible.

On the first of August I start working full days again. There’s some huge projects that have been lingering that I need to get finished. I’m going into a hole and won’t come out until they’re done.

On the first of September I’m going out on a research trip. That’s non-negotiable.

… Wait, shit, uh … Dammit, that’s the start of … you know what.