Away We Go: I Am

I am leaving. I walked away. I am driving away. I am running away. I am moving on. I am escaping. I am moving in a direction I've been considering for years. To altitude. To higher rocks on all sides. Odd, given my propensity for claustrophobia.

My internal dialogue says mountains equal happiness. Largely true given past experience. The times are happy when it's as simple as one foot in front of another, another few hundred feet gained, a visible peak. Success so easy to quantify. A tired body which means a loose mind, wind in the pines which tickles my ears. It’s noisy but soothing, so different than the roar of an interstate, the drone of appliances.

All those times had happened in the mountains. So I thought that unhappiness would be solved with being in a place like the one I had been in when the few fleeting moments of yes had occurred.

Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm not. We will soon find out. I've moved mountains of actual things to make this happen. Taking the objects I don't use, don't even want, haven't been attached to in years to the trash or the dumpster or given to people who I hope will remember me when they use it. Watching total strangers take things from my curb.

Deciding on which things to keep. More than I wanted but fewer than I expected. The special kind of fatigue that comes from judging your own objects, your actions, your past, your choices, your life. Whether the retention of an thing will justify or reverse a bad decision. Or whether it will just now bring up a good memory. Whether that feeling will outweigh the work required to figure out a place for the thing, clean it, handle it the next time possessions are packed away and driven to the next destination. Whether the management of the thing outweighs its value in remembering.

I've done all this to attempt to answer the question of what if. Would I be happier with a fresh start. Would I feel better when I wake up in the morning if I'm ringed by ancient Earth's rock. Would the sadness that comes from interpersonal slights or the stress that comes from stretching myself be salved by the chance to go on weekend hikes? Will a change of external scenery also effect the internal outlook?

I soon won't have to wonder anymore. Should I wait to examine the data for a month? A year? Will it be immediate? What outcomes should I be expecting? How should I measure happiness? My inner scientist is full of experimental variations. But will that approach be better? Or will it simply be a day where I wake up and the lack of a mind-treadmill will signal a shift? Will it be a lack that makes the difference? The absence of pressure above my right ear and that gut feeling that this isn't enough and neither am I?

I’ve been around the sun enough times to know that even if that’s true it won’t stick around forever. Another work crisis or child in extra need or crap day will intervene.

In the meantime, I am treading water with a stitch in my side. There is no timeline of knowing it worked. Any normal person would be smiling and excited in this situation. But the fact is, I am a worrier. I wish I could rearrange those vowels. Because a warrior did appear when it was time to make the decision for this change and I’m grateful for her arm-twisting. But I suppose her work here is done; she hasn’t showed up much in the time since.

I guess we’ll see. It may be days or decades and I won’t be able to write a paper on the scientific method.

But I am the one who moved toward change and I am no longer the one sitting on my hands and wishing for it. For now, that will be good enough.

Inspired by events on Interstate 70 in Utah.