I just got home from Alaska and I’m sitting in my living room. The house is pretty quiet and there’s a pile of mail sitting on the table in front of me that rivals the size of my head. I’m on the couch, perched at my computer, posed and ready to type… but there isn’t much happening.
Or maybe the problem is that there is too much happening. This is what’s going through my head…
The past year has been pretty incredible.
We’ve snuck into MGMT concerts and survived a breakdown in Laramie, WY. We’ve battled bears and ex-convicts in Yellowstone and flown planes and partied with Jim Carey. We’ve run the Tunnel to Towers Race in New York City.
We’ve been to Broadway sho
ws and played nearly 100 coffee shop shows and written at least as many blog posts. We’ve busked (played on the streets) for gas money.
We’ve wandered the halls of Harvard and Yale and eaten lobster and Kayaked the Atlantic.We’ve gift-shopped the coast of Maine and been to football games and watched the dolphins on the coast of Florida.
We’ve stayed in resorts and frat houses, watched sunsets in Newport, Rhode Island and participated in miniature golf championships. We’ve seen the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls and The Badlands and even camped (squatted, actually) in The Black Hills National Forest.
We’ve learned to live with less. We’ve taken necessary chances.
And in the process we’ve met a ton of interesting folks, some of whom we maybe shouldn’t have followed to dinner, but most of whom are still dear friends (oh, plus these guys. And these ones too).
We’ve put over 50,000 miles on two cars, since after the first one broke down, we bought a new one. We’ve written 730 postcards. We’ve visited our pasts and seen glimpses of our future.
The whole thing has been a really amazing, exhilarating, unexpected adventure.
But even amazing, exhilarating experiences are only as valuable as what you do with them, I would argue.
So, okay. What are we going to do with ours???
I think I mentioned earlier that it would be really easy for us to come home after a trip like this and find ourselves doing life exactly the way that we had done it before. But I was wrong. I’ve been changed forever by this journey. Doing life the way I did it before isn’t an option.
But, still. What good does it do if we are the only people who are ever changed by this experience? I mean, I’ll never be the same, but so what? What does that matter if I never pass it on to anyone else…?
And lets be honest. There are days (like today) when Sharaya and I are coordinating rides from the airport without cars because hers is in Nashville, where she lives now, and mine is somewhere in Wyoming; days when all we’re doing is opening mail and paying bills and catching up on weeks of missed e-mails and laundry… that feel a little disconcerting.
Those days don’t feel that earth-shattering.
But even on days like that we’ll keep chasing our dreams. We’ll keep writing books and blog posts and songs, keep reaching out to the generation behind us (and hey – maybe even the one ahead of us, too…)
And we’ll try to remember that sometimes “chasing our dreams” isn’t as glamorous as it seems. Sometimes it means fleeing mediocrity, but sometimes it means looking it square in the face. Sometimes it looks like 50-state road trips but sometimes it looks like being faithful in the day-to-day…
So what’s next…? We’re not totally sure. I mean, Sharaya is living in Nashville and touring in Europe this summer. I’m working on two books and learning how to tread water as a full-time blogger…
But other than that, we really don’t know. There’s nothing but open road in front of us…
So I guess not much has changed.
