Continuing Explorations of the Ephemeral
A last post here—find me on Medium going forward
I told someone recently that life was very full, very busy, and I felt like my routines and habits have become more of a debris trail behind me than anything else. And also, that I would not trade this sense of being off-balance for anything.
I would not go back to the place I was two years ago, waking up every morning with the placid horror that today was going to be just like yesterday and the horizon held only more of the oppressively same days. Last summer’s trip seems to have wrenched me out of that appallingly stagnant place.
I did get the truck and the camper I dreamed of during that trip. I did a lot of spreadsheet work comparing costs, gas mileage, payload, and other details. I went to test drive the Toyota Tundra I’d picked out on paper. The dealer came back with the key as I was sitting behind the wheel and I told him not to bother. The Tundra was embarrassingly large and felt all wrong, even before trying to maneuver it around the dealship parking lot. I tried out a Tacoma, which was okay, but could not find a way to make the payload work out.
Finally, in December, I traded Thirsty in on a 2022 Ford Ranger Lariat, the only similar Ranger available for hundreds of miles, in Cayenne Red. It’s not a color I’d have chosen for myself, but as reds go, it’s not terrible and it’s grown on me. I loved it from the moment I test-drove it. It just feels right.
In February, I extended my trip to Winter Blast to go on to Flagstaff where Comet got her OVRLND camper shell installed.
Short camping excursions have been giving me a chance to dial-in what I’d like to do in terms of building it out—or not. I envisioned doing some kind of built-in camper system, but in actual practice find that I like the flexibility of being able to empty the truck bed. I’m finding a middle ground, gradually.
I dreaded the possibility that I wasn’t making the right decisions, that I’d regret the money or the vehicle, but I’m glad I put those fears aside and moved forward. It makes me smile when I pull out of the driveway. It feels unreasonably extravagant and luxurious. It gives me joy on camping trips. Putting it into 4-wheel drive to do something truck-like is a thrill. The gas mileage is terrible. Outfitting it for everything I’d like to do promises become my favorite endless money pit of all time. I love it a little too much, knowing full well how this now-happy attachment is a vulnerability. Maybe these explorations of impermanence have given me some capacity to lean into that a little. It won’t last forever, but I’m resolved to not let that get in the way of enjoying it now.
In choosing what I wanted in the way of a truck camper, I had a loosely-held goal of doing a trip to the Arctic Circle. That was less about a burning desire to do exactly that and more about wanting to see that part of the world while needing a some kind of leverage for combating the return of oppressive tedium. I still think about doing that trip someday, but suddenly life became very full in other ways, and the immediate future holds shorter trips.
I’m at a new job at Medium, with new interesting problems every day. Instead of waking up in the morning already bored, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about whether or not we’re doing the right thing. I’ll take that tradeoff; it reflects that what I’m doing actually matters.
I’m awkwardly realizing I should do something about this Substack blog (Substack and Medium are competitors of a sort, though no one is telling me I have to do anything about it). So going forward, when I do write, I’ll write on Medium. (If you’d like help subscribing there to get future posts there, drop me a note and I’ll do it for you.)
I’m also absorbed in another experiment in impermanence, one that feels too precious to write much about here.
Despite wanting it to never end, I try to stay right here in “now”…where I remain the luckiest woman in the world.
So see you on Medium. Impermanently, of course. I just posted little photo essay from yesterday’s beach fun with Liesl over there.
See you at the water cooler...
Hooray! I like Medium and follow Caitlin Johnstone and umair haque. And now you, too! Sounds like a very interesting gig! I hope you have time to write.