Back from the mountains

and I smell so bad

I’m currently sitting down at a Fred Again concert in Seattle. Yes, that’s right. Sitting. At a Fred Again concert. I totally should have splurging on GA, even if they cost an extra $100. Note to future self: life is short — always get floor.

But no regrets. So, I’m trying to recast this as a win for my sore and broken knees and ankles, who have been carrying my 60 pound pack up and down 5 different mountains in as many days.

I’m kinda sitting with what the last couple of days have taught me. Strangely, with the newfound lucidity the mountains have brought me, the strongest feeling right now is one of FOMO. I’m catching up on all of these school group chats I’ve been away from over the last week, and somehow feel surprised that

1. Life is moving on without me

2. Playing hooky gets old pretty fast when you do it alone.

But, I say “somehow feel surprised” because I did know this would happen. Everyone tells you it will. I was in a bad situation, and still think I chose the best option given the circumstances. And of course, the age old Life vs Impact dilemma makes the situation even more complicated.

And yeah. “Lucidity the mountains brought me”. So I’m fixed, at least a little bit. My main datapoints backing this up are that I don’t feel a crippling empty pressure inside of my head at all times, I don’t feel like I’m living life in the 3rd person, and I’m able to write this journal entry (which is quickly becoming a blogpost) passably well. I may write more on this at some point, but I want to wait until everything is definitely settled down. There have been too many ups and downs to this “condition” in the last couple months to say anything definitive just yet.

So that leaves me with about 2 months of free time to explore the world with a mostly working brain and the tidy sum this summer has left me. What do I want to do with this time?

I want to get good at somethings. My friend Julian once mentioned going to South America for 6 months and becoming an expert Salsa dancer. I want to do something similar. Skill-first travel.

But what should *it* be? The most obvious thing at this point would be to continue down this motorcycle fixation of mine and actually become good at that. Figure out how to do the maintenance, and the zen. Yes I read that book. I could get involved with some biker gangs, and see what that stuff’s all about.

I could go work some random job in a different country, try and expand my worldview. What’s construction like in New Zealand? Teaching elementary schoolers in Thailand? Unloading ships in Italy? It’s a bit of a troubled white boy cliche thing to do, but maybe there’s a good reason for that.

I clearly have some homework to do before I can figure anything out for certain. So I’m going to try and come up with some broad principles and requirements I want whatever I do to follow:

1. It needs to involve people. Social anxiety is the mind killer, and there’s only so much that mountain time can do to fix that.

2. New skill, unrelated to my work. It’s been a while since I got good at something new. It’s nice to have a broad repertoire of these things, otherwise I feel a bit one dimensional.

3. It has to have at least some non-USA component. I truly love this country, but have spent a disproportionate amount of time comfortably exploring its corners, and my US-centricity is approaching caricature levels.

4. I want to make it to Boston for a few highlights in November. This adds some constraints to the days I can travel.

5. I prefer journeying over touring. If I’m going to be exploring a region, my preferred level of structure is “start here, end here, with this mode of transportation”. Anything else is best figured out spontaneously on the fly.

6. I need to feel ready for OpenAI. Although most of the time will be spent on strictly non-work related things, I think there are some projects I could do that would make me feel more prepared to start a full time position. More on those at some point.

Well that’s about all I’ve got time for right now. The opener’s been finished for 25 minutes. The lights are starting to change. The stage is set. The crowd is restless.

It’s time for the show.