Living the Dream - The Endgame

Note: This piece was originally published over on Free Range and I’m proud to be able to bring it to you here as well. They have tons of great stuff - click on over there sometime, and check them out!

The other question most people ask me about my travels is, “how long are you going to be traveling?”

The true answer - I don’t know - unsettles people in a way I haven’t quite been able to explain.

Multiple friends and colleagues have assigned arbitrary timelines to my journeys, then re-told it to themselves as truth. From my boss to several of my close friends, the ability to understand an open-ended journey just seems intellectually difficult - so hard in fact, that they’ll make up a number and stubbornly stick with it, just so my story fits in the box:

People go on travels, then come back home.

Home.

More than anything, I think it comes down to home.

Home is a relentlessly powerful concept in the human experience. Every culture has myth and lore about journeys and returning home. Every culture places value on a physical space, shared with family and the people you love.

But for me, home has always been a nightmare.

I grew up the kid of an Air Force captain, constantly on the move. By the fifth grade, I’d been to 5 schools. By college graduation, it was 12. When adulthood hit, I continued the same pattern myself - moving often, never quite settling down.

I ended up haunted by the most common get-to-know-you question.

“Where are you from?”

I’ve never had a satisfactory answer. Sometimes, I just pick somewhere I’ve lived at random. Sometimes I say “it’s complicated.” Sometimes, vagaries, “Mostly, the Southwestern United States.”

Never do the answers fit, and never do the listeners really know what do with the obvious uncertainty their question provoked.

I come off as someone who’s been living in some shoddy witness protection program where they don’t give you a solid backstory.

Until now.

Here, in these travels, I finally have an answer that feels solid.

“Originally, I’m from the United States. Now, I’m a nomad - I live all over the world.”

That, if I’m honest, is the endgame of this living the dream.

My travels don’t have an expiration date.

They don’t involve moving back to some city in the U.S, getting a nice apartment, and going out for happy hours on Tuesdays.

They don’t line up with any of the collective stories we tell ourselves about place or home.

Instead they match the truth about life itself - everything is open-ended, and all the stories are just stories.

You can always make up a new one.

Steven writes about his journeys, big life questions, and the occasional terribly embarrassing travel story over at Ink and Feet.