Vagabonding – Going It Alone
…you should always be ready to go it alone…
Rolf Potts, Vagabonding
Since I left my stationary life behind in November, then flying to Atlanta, GA in December I have been around close friends — that is until I decided to go somewhere I had never been before without a Lindy Hop event to buffer me.
I flew to San Francisco because the flight was cheaper than other places I was hoping to see and I’ve never spent time in California. I had a number of contacts here, people I knew more as acquaintances than as close friends, and they have been gracious and generous. Manu, Shannon, Carla, Michael – some of them people I met for the first time when I put my stuff down in their home have been wonderful and hospitable.
Having been around very close friends for nearly two months without interruption it was when that immediacy disappeared that loneliness hit me.
I didn’t expect loneliness to come on as hard as it did.
Chris Guillebeau just recently wrote about loneliness on the road. He has been traveling a lot longer than I have and his words help me weigh loneliness in a different way.
My thinking is, if I never experience it, I’m probably living a safe, comfortable life.
Vagabonding is an act of pilgrimage.
I am on the road to excise the parts of myself which stand in my way. To come to terms with myself on the edges. To do the things that scare me. To grow in spirit and character.
As these words from Michael Crichton go: “stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your clothes, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inveitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.”
I am not in a foreign country where the culture clashes against my very person or the world around me is alien, yet I am still stripped of my ordinary life. I have not the friends I know with me or the places that make me comfortable.
It forces me to enjoy the simple pleasures that I can find. Walking streets and neighborhoods I have never seen. Sitting on a picnic table with a cup of coffee. Practicing calligraphy. Chatting with strangers at coffee shops, bus stations, and airports.
I am in practice a very socially connected person.
I talk to a number of friends all across the country throughout the day. I keep up with my e-mail, social networking sites, blogs, text messages and phone calls. Yet I am at the same—a solitary person. I need time on my own to recharge. I have spent days living in NYC where I did not talk to or message a single person.
