On the Road Again

I am two months shy of the one year anniversary of the day I returned home from Asia and am preparing again to recklessly take on the road. When my plane arrived in Seattle in May I was a different person than when I'd left six months before, and now as I look back at the things that have happened in the last 10 months I know the changes are sure to keep coming fast at me whether I want them or not.

When I came home the first time I didn't stick around too long. I got a job in Utah and was off on my way within two weeks of being in the country. I was ready to head off into a bright future career in therapy with all the passion and purpose I could fit in my backpack. I flew first to El Passo to pick up Tryg's green pickup truck and drove it up to the remote town of Roosevelt, Utah where I fit my self snugly between the crags of the Uinta mountains for 3 months. 

I had planned to stay there longer of course, and made ever effort to do so but the trouble with living 10 miles outside the middle of nowhere is there aren't many people. I made one really good friend but being non-Mormon and an introvert meant I had little potential for community. I did my best to make Roosevelt my home though. I planted a garden, spent many days hiking in the mountains. I even adopted a little white kitten who I'd found starving in my backyard eating one of his siblings. I named him Angulimala after a Buddhist parable about redemption.

But when my garden failed to take root in the desert dirt, and internet dating proved to me that there really was no one for me to connect with within 150 miles, I knew I had to leave. What was frustrating about this was that the job was incredible, I'd never felt so fulfilled in all my life. I worked with kids who needed help, and often asked for it. It was a legitimate culture of healing and having to leave the boys I'd grown so close to was one of the hardest choices I've had to make. Every day I went to work was a great day, I was never unhappy walking back to my house after a 16 hour shift, but the weekends were so long and so lonely and I was starting to get depressed.

I drove back to Portland in a single night with 4 redbulls and half a subway sandwich. I was envisioning a life with my friends again, and was ready to shake off the isolation blues but it wouldn't quite work out that way.
I got a job at another therapeutic facility outside of Portland, got an apartment with a couple of guys off craigslist and started the sedentary life I'd been expecting when I'd come home in the first place. This new job was nothing at all like the old. Where the Utah job involved long therapeutic conversations with kids and seeing real daily progress, my new job involved learning to restrain violent teenagers, dodging punches, and being spit on; not to mention learning to take “go fuck yourself faggot” as a standard greeting. It wasn't nearly the fulfilling job I'd had before, but I was ready to make it work, and after a time I gained a good deal of pride in my ability to thrive in such a high intensity environment. At first I was afraid to go to work, seriously concerned for my physical safety, but by the end I was excited, ready to slip in what little bits mentorship I could between surges in adrenaline.

It ended badly though. The company was big and I was moved from one part of the program to another multiple times. I found myself eventually stationed with a group of “adults” that were mostly around 18 or 19 years old. This part of the program had almost nothing in common with the parts dedicated to minors. Because of their legal status as “adults” we had to treat them entirely differently.

I suppose I should be brief on this point, since one's career is based, I'm told, on their network of well wishing professionals from their past. But the adult program was not good; really not good. In fact it was so not good that I felt I had to act in what minor capacity I could. I sat down with my boss and told her in no uncertain terms how I was feeling, told her the program wasn't working, told her it had to change, said it could be a million times better, used the phrase “morally unacceptable,” wrote her a 3 page proposal on a program that might actually provide benefits to their clients rather than just hold them for a time and release them every bit as fucked up as they were coming in.

Within a week I was moved to the night shift of an entirely different part of the program. My body refused to sleep during the day so I found myself only getting 4-6 hours of sleep a night, and I started going loopy. In addition to the lack of REM sleep though I was also facing again the social isolation, many times worse than it had been in Utah. When I'd come back to Portland I'd been excited to reconnect with old friends, build a social network again, and live a good life with the people I cared about. But after 6 months in Asia and three months in Utah I found the people I'd thought would be there weren't. Then the residual depression and panic of not knowing my direction in life managed to express itself in a few glorious busts of ass-holery, alienating the few friends or potential friends I'd had left. Even those I'd thought might be the lifers were gone. With Tryg working on a farm down in Corvallis I'd found myself alone in the city.

After a time though my life had begun to right itself as I began meeting friends at work. I'd felt good about where things were headed, even if they were headed there slowly. But suddenly with the move to the night shift, 10pm to 8am Friday through Monday I had no social life, or human contact. On an average week I had about 2 conversations with another human being, and one of them was usually about work. I was desperately alone, sleep deprived, angry about my job, angry about my friends, just simply angry. It was about this time I decided to change everything.

I lasted about two months on the night shift. I moved out of my apartment, gave a philosophical middle finger to the therapeutic industry and the suffocating layers of bureaucracy that I'd seen kill any spirit of healing, and declared myself and artist. I moved into my parent's guest room in order to get myself straight again. I stayed there just long enough to realize that staying there wasn't an option and to get all my business in order. I packed my things, made a second declaration that my car was now my home and hit the open road in search of hard work and a different life, or at least that's the plan, I leave tonight.

No the dali lama never actually said this, but the message captures my current state of mind really well

I've got my eyes set on a fire fighting job for the summer and will be traveling around the state of Oregon interviewing in different counties for those jobs. Then after the summer is done, depending on how much money I make I will pick out an adventure and take off in that new direction. So far the options in the hat include biking across the US, going to India, returning to China, or some other as yet undecided journey to undertake.

The road has been my drug of choice for a while now. The question of whether it is medicine or addiction is a valid one I've yet to answer. But it makes me feel powerful in a way nothing else can ( I've heard good things about PCP though). I've never known less about what my future holds.  

If right now you're thinking “Gosh Ian, you sound kinda depressed I'm worried about you” well yeah, if things were hunky dori the explorer I probably wouldn't have quite my job and moved into my car. But this is normal for me, when things aren't working I change them. I see so many people who are utterly committed to their unhappy lives because at least it's comfortable, at least their misery is familiar. The fear of the unknown holds them to a life they do not want. But in the last year traveling through Asia, sleeping on benches, living in hostels, depending on strangers every day, then working with kids who literally attacked me on a semi regular basis, I made fear and uncertainty my bitch. Knowing as I do that I am capable of facing anything, I cannot justify living an unhappy life just because it is what I am comfortable with.

My new painting hobby

So here I go again on my own. The road is there, and the wandering spirit is fully aroused. This will be different than Asia, Tryg is all settled down in a shack on a farm these days and I won't be taking many pictures cause the only camera I have is an Ipod, but I've been painting and I'll post those, along with what ever else I might want to do. I should probably get around to updating the rest of the blog as well, make it less Asiaish but that might not happen any time soon. To those of you reading now and who may continue to read as I make my way, thank you, you're awesome, and maybe I'll see you out there some where.