I’ll arrive at my 18th South by Southwest later today. I can barely remember what that first experience was like. I certainly didn’t imagine it to be a life-changing one. And yet, I owe much of what I do today to my experiences there.
I’ll be blogging this year’s experience at The Cult of Me, the AEJMC’s Tech Meme and Tweeting from @thecultofme.
Now, it’s time to get Down With The King:
A few years ago, my world was crashing.
I’d met a girl. A fabulous girl. We shared the same interests, the same passions in life. We were Type As who liked the home when we weren’t working. And we liked to drink. And write.
Of course we hit it off instantly and found ourselves in a relationship. Fast. Too fast as it turns out. She was fresh out of a very long relationship and I was just returned from 12 years on the road. Before we knew what happened, we were living together.
It ended. Rapidly. Badly.
And I left. The minute summer came, I climbed in my Pontiac Vibe and set out across the country, determined to change my life (The Year of Action, it was dubbed). I spent the summer exercising, trying to curtail my drinking, attempting to quit smoking.
Mostly, though, I spent the summer calling all my friends and my ex-girlfriends. Asking them for frank assessments of me as a human.
No judgments. No arguments. I actively encouraged them to tell me the things that I was unable to see myself. The resulting three-month trip across the country turned into the Killing Me blog (on MySpace). I wrote about the conversations, the mistakes, the women, the friends. 75,000 words worth.
It was a journey into my head. This helped prepare me for what was coming, although not in the ways I expected. It did help me, when I returned, to realize how much I had loved – still love – that girl. Enough that I was able to let her go. So that she could find her happiness.
A happiness she was able to return to me just a few months later, when my drinking nearly took my life.
Driving through the California desert and into the vast emptiness of Arizona after seven days digging through my family’s past, I’ve had this song in my head all day. And I wonder how I have ended up where I am. Sometimes I think I took a wrong turn:
I’ve never been much help to my students when they’ve asked me for advice on becoming a writer.
It’s not because I don’t want to be helpful. I remember their angst and confusion and loneliness, trying to contemplate a life where I get paid to simply put words on a page. It seemed, to steal from Richard Dawkins, like climbing Mount Improbable.
There’s nothing I would like more than to tell them the path they need to follow to become writers. Instead I find myself sending them to the major “media job” websites, helping them research interesting companies and editing their cover letters.
This feels wholly inadequate to me.
***
This post started out as a treatise on dating before it took a turn into something bigger. But it’s important to look at the roots to understand the larger point. I think.
I was talking with my friend last night, lamenting (actually joking) about single life. Here’s my thesis conclusion, which I hope isn’t simply retconned into some truth that I’ve learned to live with: I’d rather be lonely and single the rest of my life than not lonely and somebody’s fall-back position or second choice.
I’ve stopped and started this post several times today, which is ironic considering the idea behind it. These things happen, though, and I’ve made my peace with such contradictions in my life.
Enough with the trying to say it perfectly. I’m just going to let it rip:
I do not understand people who refuse to have a good time with life.
***
“If you think you can’t, you’re right.”
I love that saying because it encapsulates everything that you need to know about how the world operates, how people will respond to you and how you should go about living your life.
I repeat it to my students oftentimes throughout the semester. I impart it any time someone comes to me for advice on a problem in their life. I share it in casual conversation each day more times than I know what to do with.
***
“Yes, and”
My buddy Austin and I find movies for each other. Or we used to. Back when we actually had time to do things like watch movies and then share them with each other.
(The best moment is when, on the same day, we each picked out Donnie Darko for the other one. Unbeknownst to the other. It was like the “Gift of the Magi”, only cool and with less hair loss.)
Life keeps us from this these days.
But I’ll always be thankful for his find: The Salton Sea, a disturbing and uncomfortable film about drug dealers, crystal meth, revenge, murder and chaos. We have watched it, by ourselves, over the years and silently commiserated. The themes are extremely vivid.
This isn’t a story about movies or my friend Austin or sharing, though. Because the Salton Sea, a 376-square mile area in southern California, came up today as I met some of my relatives.
***
That my family was involved in one of the bloodiest conflicts in Appalachia isn’t news. At least for those of you reading the blog (or accidentally asking me some question tangentially related to Appalachia, fighting, America, Americana or anything else I can relate to the Bakers).
It’s Sunday. Day Four of my Western Road Trip.
I won’t lie. I’m a bit worn out right now. I’ve already logged 350 driving miles (not counting the 60 mile trip to the airport) and four hours of flight time. I’m ready to relax, something that won’t happen until tomorrow at the earliest.
This is a gauntlet, but one well worth the running.
The best part: seeing my parents after they’ve spent several months on the road. I can’t keep up with them, really. They have skirted all over the Southwest and West. But I caught them for a few days in Phoenix. And boy, what a nice place.
There’s not much to do, but there’s not too much we wanted to do. There’s a nice fitness joint, some walking trails and a great living area (complete with a balcony to enjoy the 70+ degree weather).
I’m sitting in the Bagel Nosh, a little half-baked cafe in Phoenix just down the street from my parent’s time share.
It’s a gorgeous day, mid-seventies. A far cry from the grey and wintery white that has blanked Indiana for the past month. Truthfully, though, the grey and the winter haven’t bothered me this year, not in the way that it has in the past. Perspective has much to do with that.
It’s still nice to awake at 630 am, walk outside in shorts and go for a run without shivering the first few miles. There’s something to be said for the sun and happiness. Of course, there is something to be said for many things and happiness.
But these vignettes may be an interesting way to approach the concept.
***
I have made the decision to expend as little psychic time and energy on those people who have allocated their time away from me. That’s an impersonal way for saying the truth of it, but this accomplishes the goal.
Out there in the spotlight/You’re a million miles away
Every ounce of energy/You try to give away
As the sweat pours out your body/Like the music that you play
Later in the evening/As you lie awake in bed
With the echoes from the amplifiers/Ringin’ in your head
You smoke the day’s last cigarette,/Rememberin’ what she said
***
I should start by telling you the lead up to my travels is filled with massive anxiety despite my king-hell organizational abilities with travel. I have logged more miles than most, although certainly fewer that professionals. Conservatively speaking, I would suspect I’ve spent at least 20 percent of the last ten years traveling the America and Europe.
Still, there is an unsettled-ness that comes with unrooting myself. This manifests itself in my thoughts so I suspect this won’t be much of a story.
I’ve never been very good with goodbyes.
Actually, it’s endings I disliked. The sense of loss, the incomplete-ness of it. A closed door that is never quite shut but inevitably locked. Always knowing there are things – some unknow-able things – that are happening on the other side.
For years, I fought against endings. And in some cases, this is good. There are some things we most certainly must fight to retain and maintain.
These things are few and far between, though, and they come with no flashing sign: “Fight For This Here!”
Instead, we’re left to constantly struggle between fighting and letting go.
My mind has been tuned, though my alcoholism, to cling desperately to the things around me. To keep, control and hold tight anything that resembles a light. A life preserver in the chaos.
Then a funny thing happened…
***
Almost one year ago, I had a conversation with someone who at one time had been more than a little important in my life. A relationship that was continually almost one, but never quite one.
I couldn’t tell you why. We just never did. And so it wasn’t.
