Travel Bug

I hate this travel bug. Every morning I get off at Union Station in downtown DC and I wonder why I’m going to work. Why not just take off and go? Of course, all the departing trains are going to boring places. New York, Pennsylvania somewhere, New Jersey, Chicago…

I keep looking for the train that’s going somewhere insane – nonstop to Black Rock, share a cabin with Spencer Tracy!

I’ve always loved trains, but it’s hard to indulge in them when you’re an American. Even if I do go somewhere insane, I’ll have to pay a crazy Indian to drive me to the airport so I can rent a car or something.

Or say I stay on the beaten path and go visit my friends in New Orleans, because, well, I always want to visit my friends in New Orleans. Okay, it’s $125 for a coach seat…but that won’t do. Might as well spring for the $325 cabin. Why? Because it’s a goddamned 26 hour trip. That’s insane. I can make that trip on backroads in 16 hours. And even at four bucks a gallon, it would just cost me about $240.

But I wouldn’t be able to drink for 26 hours while my train sits on a siding and I watch a five mile long freight train pass us at 3mph.

So instead of looking at trains, I get to Union Station and think about getting right back on the Metro and going to the airport, then taking the first available international flight to…anywhere. These are serious thoughts, too. I sometimes stop and stand there like an idiot and become consumed by an internal fight: Keep walking to work or go to the airport.

This travel bug peaks in the spring and summer. These glorious mornings in the city which serve only to remind me of glorious mornings in all the foreign cities I’ve been to – London, Edinburgh, Madrid, Seville, Prague, Vienna, Brasov, etc. I’ve always loved mornings, even though I’m not a morning person. This is why I wake up at 5:30am for no good reason.

I’m not even happy in the mornings…mainly because, 90% of the time, I have less than two hours to get myself into some semblance of decency and then fight my way through the shuffling, moron, commuting masses. My ideal morning is sitting on the balcony with a good cup of coffee. Nowhere to go, nothing to do for the day. That wonderful window of time where everything is just right.

I frequently think about liquidating everything – just ending my life as I know it, turning everything into cash, and then vanishing. Travel until the cash runs out, and then start taking odd jobs and working myself around the world. I can find little reason to stay where I am.

But I’m not that crazy, because now’s not the time to fly off the handle. My debt is high, and I’ve built up some responsibilities… Two things that will be resolved as 2008 turns into 2009. And I’ve decided to start dismantling my life in anticipation of summer 2009, when I’ll return to my six weeks a year abroad. A luxury that keeps me at my current day job. No other job would tolerate that sort of insanity.

It’s the perfect marriage – stay in the rut that I so want to escape in exchange for a paycheck, and the ability to take one or two months off a year.

I see it now, the older I get. I see the mistake – all I’ve ever wanted was to travel. I should just be doing that. I think of the money lost on my supposed dream project of publishing books (something I’ve aspired towards since high school), and I do regret it. It’s cost me my savings and the meager inheritance I got from my two worthless parents. No matter the accomplishments, all I think about is how the money didn’t come back… And the money is what’s needed to travel. I move now into my second summer without serious travel and, despite spending last Christmas in London, I feel like I’m somehow betraying myself.

In an attempt to reclaim my soul, I’ve gone overboard in planning monthly outings. These are sandwiched between my regular day job, my weekend job, and my company. All in, about 100 hours of work a week. I wake up exhausted and, on the rare free day, I can’t even bring myself to go outside and check the mail. I just want to lie around in my boxers and drink and not fucking talk to anyone or do anything. I’ve come to cherish those dead days – I gear my overworking to try and make sure I have one dead day for every nine working days. (When you have a weekend job, and when you run your own company, the days are no longer measured in weeks.)

Nevertheless, I’ve carved out time to do things – small and not so – over the next few months. A Friday afternoon off to drink myself blind with friends, a weekend at a friend’s cabin, four days in New Orleans, a Saturday afternoon tour of a brewery.

As much as I hate people, I’m tired of travelling alone, so I’ve attempted to draft friends to accompany me on these mini-vacations. A list that’s grown from a select few to much larger numbers as friends invite other friends. I’ve also gotten lots of fallout from friends who seem insulted at the invitations/themes/whatever. Weird and cold responses, which I find disappointing.

I’ve never been good with people. Only child, latchkey kid, crushed by the variety of evils my parents committed. Then ten years of chronic pain, which crippled my ability to function socially. I’ve had terrible luck with friends, and often feel that those who stick with me just barely tolerate me. Much of that, perhaps, is in my head. But there have been enough so-called friends in my past who have really fucked me over to make me gun-shy.

I’m going through this thing where, after a miracle operation to cure the pain, I feel like I have a new lease on life. I also feel like I’ve gone from 21 (when the pain started in earnest) directly to 34, with some sort of big darkness in between. This leads to many complications because 34 is nothing like 21.

My god, there’s the morning thought as I debate hopping on the first train west: My entire adult life has been spent in a haze of pain and the treatment for that pain – drugs, failed operations…

Now that I can live like a normal person, I find myself a little unsure of which path to take. Embrace adulthood? Freak out and run? Something needs to change.