First, some review:
From Dictionary.com:
'NEBULOUS: hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused'
'Confused' can just go away....yes, it's true; sometimes I am confused, but I'm surely never seeking it. Sometimes it just crawls up and bites me. :-)
The other three descriptions, though, are precisely what I'm talking about. A road trip, any vacation really, is first and foremost a move to feel, for a little while at least, 'hazy, vague, and indistinct', disconnected from everyday life. And for me, it doesn't require driving 14,000 miles. I enjoy the nebulous sensation even on the short two-hour road trips I take nearly every week, from which I return home the same day. I love how it feels stopping for gas in a town where I am a stranger. There is something almost sensual about that kind of anonymity.
Don't get me wrong, I want to engage people on my road trip, I don't want to be invisible. In fact, a big part of 1/48/50 (which also for review, means: 1 road trip through 48 states in under 50 years...that is, before I turn 50...) will involve not being aloof, going out of my way to talk to people. But I want to remain on the periphery nevertheless, basking in that sense of spirited weightlessness that makes any and all travel so pleasurable. And I'll certainly revel in the old familiar feeling of being the kid on the school bus.
But that's just on the road, for a finite period of time. When trying to apply the word 'nebulous' to day-to-day life, one is likely to get a vastly different result. I would never tell anyone to try living nebulously in the real world; it's a recipe for alienation and loneliness, the surest way to accumulate regrets. I've said it more than once: I don't think of myself as the loner I once did, I put no stock in the drama and romance I used to find (or believe I was finding) in the lives of my lone-riding heroes. Seriously, engage your day-to-day life head on; make friends, keep friends, preserve family ties while you can. In the end, that really is the stuff that matters, and it's later than you think.
The 'Reasons to Live Nebulously' that show up on this page from time to time are not to be taken all that seriously. They're mostly just a way to fill space and pass time (that's what happens when you start a blog about a road trip that is still years in the future), but at their most pointed, I guess they are things that make me step back and take a good, hard look at myself and the world around me, assess where I've been and just where I'm going, before I make my next move.
But I do always make that next move.
It might be said they are things that could get me wanting to disengage from my life completely, or wishing I could, even though I know I never will. Admittedly, I admire people like Tim Treadwell and Christopher McCandless for the choices they made. And further, sometimes the choice doesn't seem all that hard. What would I be leaving behind if i just stepped out of society? Honey Boo-Boo? The Dumb Ass Housewives of Wherever, Whenever? The Kardashians? Dash Dolls? Drones in the sky? Cameras being worn as glasses? The predatory marketing of prescription drugs inevitably leading to the predatory marketing of law offices, when those drugs are found, as they almost always are, to have injurious side effects? Processed food feeding billions? Those billions at best getting in my fricking way at Wal-Mart or in line in front of me at the post office, at worst overtaxing the planet's resources?
But I do always make that next move.
It might be said they are things that could get me wanting to disengage from my life completely, or wishing I could, even though I know I never will. Admittedly, I admire people like Tim Treadwell and Christopher McCandless for the choices they made. And further, sometimes the choice doesn't seem all that hard. What would I be leaving behind if i just stepped out of society? Honey Boo-Boo? The Dumb Ass Housewives of Wherever, Whenever? The Kardashians? Dash Dolls? Drones in the sky? Cameras being worn as glasses? The predatory marketing of prescription drugs inevitably leading to the predatory marketing of law offices, when those drugs are found, as they almost always are, to have injurious side effects? Processed food feeding billions? Those billions at best getting in my fricking way at Wal-Mart or in line in front of me at the post office, at worst overtaxing the planet's resources?
There's no denying our modern society is kind of an agitated freak show. There's no denying the sorry state of our news media, our tread-worn political process, our lowered standards in every facet of Life - entertainment, education, politics, even finance. There's no denying our eroding privacy, our allegiance to corporate brands that control how we live by manipulating the decisions we make as consumers.
I can't be the only one who has been pushed to the fringe of his thoughts by the monstrosity our collective culture has become. I can't be the only one who occasionally gets set to wishing he could live out in the woods, totally off the grid, gardening and fishing in sun-lit (and wholly insightful) silence for the remainder of his days.
Everyone has some sort of fantasy about living nebulously. Nobody's okay with how things are all the time. To quote Louis CK: Everything's amazing, and nobody's happy.
But the answer, I think, is not to disappear; the answer lies in learning how to cope, how to embrace the good and manage the bad. It would seem Treadwell and McCandless could not cope. For both men it was demons, rather than a sense of adventure, that drove them into the wild. And while it's true their stories are fascinating, it's equally true, and glaringly so, neither ended well.
As to last week's post, Reason #34 to Live Nebulously, I'm sorry, I just don't like the thought of robots, or artificial intelligence of any kind. To be perfectly honest, a proliferation of cyborg beings, to the point where they walk and talk among us, become integrated into our daily lives with the ability to intuit, might be a real reason to live nebulously, to actually take the leap. C3PO and R2-D2 are delightful on the silver screen, safely in that galaxy far, far away; I would not find them so enchanting in real life (nor, I suspect, would they be so enchanting). It's my one true prejudice; I do not like robots. I do not think any (further) foray into such technology will lead anywhere good, and when I see something as surreal (but real!) as 'robotic cheetah' lumbering clumsily along the grassy grounds of MIT to the cheers and applause of its madly intelligent and gifted creators, it makes my skin crawl.
Almost as much as the Kardashians do! ;-)
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While I'm at at, and on a related note, here is Reason #35 to Live Nebulously:
It would seem I'm in good company...
CLICK HERE
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While I'm at at, and on a related note, here is Reason #35 to Live Nebulously:
It would seem I'm in good company...
CLICK HERE
