You guys know that significant change and I are frequent dance partners. When we’re together there’s quite a lot of spinning; change gets me dizzy then throws me out to the edge of the dance floor hanging by our fingertips, to pull me back close again for the next spin. Other times we engage in a loving and elegant waltz all across the floor.
Mostly it’s like the night I learned contra dancing while at my sister’s party of old-time musicians: I danced on a driveway slanted downhill, so I had to compensate to stay with the group while moving in and out of the spinning circle and twirling slightly downhill—a little wary for my life yet determined to learn and stay in step. It was entirely discombobulating and inescapable, and sometimes I shrieked with delight.
I now know that change will go on forever. Everyone knows this, but lately I KNOW this.
Man this is a long and philosophical intro! (With tricky imagery, to boot.) My point is that I’ve suddenly switched gears from living in a home, with a job and nearby friends, to being itinerant very soon, no more job at all, and I’ll see old friends on special occasions, and maybe make new ones of a new sort.
This has been my dream for the short while I’m known Tracy, but it’s been his for many years, and he’s been preparing for it for years, too. When it became our reality unexpectedly, he was (and is) 100% gung-ho to tackle our ginormous task list. I’m excited and slightly freaked out, only because the new life is an unknown.
I can imagine it as a variety of days:
- I’ll have settled into a campground near a national or state park, working on a retired-person’s routine of morning tea and knitting under the Airstream’s awning, planning our day of adventure for whatever that location offers. Kayaking? Biking? Hiking with Banjo? Maybe no tea: to avoid the crowds of tourists we hit the adventure at sunrise.
- Or it’s raining for days, and we’re holed up inside the Airstream with a lazy dog, getting creative to cook in the tiny kitchen. Maybe playing uke and guitar. Planning the next few places we’ll go and making reservations.
- Maybe it’s a travel period when we’re on the road a few hours a day, staying in Walmart parking lots as we make our way slowly towards Finn’s graduation, or a music festival, or an appointment in another state to get more solar installed.
- Maybe we decide to stop outside a town we heard has excellent beer just to check it out and we find a state park we’d never heard of and stay a week unplanned.
It seems that this new lifestyle will be driven by change (good pun there). But this change will be shaped like adventure and growth. Immersion in nature. Discovery at every new stop.
I’ve never liked sitting still, but I’ve also been wary of the wild dance. This time maybe change and I will go on a journey together instead of a dance. Less frenetic. More linear.
Right now all I can do is imagine and keep working that task list with Tracy’s infectious enthusiasm.