Five years ago, I was at a crossroads. I had just left my job, Wendy (my wife) wasn’t happy with hers, and we’d grown tired of just getting by in Austin, Texas. Most of all, we were ready for something new. We’d been trudging through a long attempt at “normalcy,” largely a failed one. Mind you, our version of “normal” included a lot of rock shows and a second home at our favorite pub, but we still had most of the accouterments of a regular life- job, cars, debt, and all of that. But little in the line of fulfillment or even what you might call purpose. We were floating, heads above water, but only just, and with no idea what might lie beyond the next bend in the river.
Cue cries of the midlife crisis. But that’s not what this was. For one thing, it’s probably a little late for that. For another, there was no crisis. Everything was going along just as it always had been. But it was time for a sober reckoning with the world and our place in it. So, we did what a person ought to do every now and again but seldom does: We took a pause.
We thought about the life we were living and how that might change going forward. Wendy was tired of her job. We both longed for the creative life that we hadn’t been living. We were tired of treading water, trying to keep up with life in big-city Austin. It was plain that it was time to start again. Our lease was almost up. We thought we had enough money in our retirement account to float for a while. It was time to cut bait, and so we did. In a matter of days, Wendy had given notice at her job and we’d started telling people about our plans, such as they were. But what were we doing exactly?
I’ve always been restless, a product of having grown up an Army brat, I suppose, or of being a dreamer, always enamored of a new horizon. We’d talked often of travel and were happiest when we were on the road. I’d started out to do documentary film work years before, when we had gone on the road with our favorite band to memorialize what was supposed to be their final tour (you can see the final result of that at gimmebackmyband.com,) so it seemed natural to continue that journey. Abuzz with anticipation about this next phase in our lives, we were ready to go. And so we did.
Armed with little more than a camera and a vague idea that we would use it to document our travels, we pointed Gertie, our trusted 2005 Toyota Matrix, toward the west and pressed the gas. It was great! Within days, we’d slept in one of the iconic old Route 66 motor lodges (the Blue Swallow Motel, in Tucumcari, NM,) discovered Las Vegas, NM, been to the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, and had gone to visit an old friend in Colorado. We pressed on, dipping our toes in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, hanging out with our daughters on their respective coasts, seeing old friends here and there, even making new ones on occasion. Those first few months were a road-trippers dream, a great testimony to the natural beauty of this country, and a boon to the oil companies of the world, as we just kept on driving.
What we didn’t do was document our travels. It’s one thing to travel, to roll down the road as though you didn’t have a care in the world. It’s quite another to actually do the work of documenting it. After months of flitting about the country, we had nothing to show for it. We did figure a couple of things out, though. For one thing, when you’re whizzing down the road, there’s not time to film anything other than the stripes on the highway. For another, you need to actually plan for things. You can’t just show up somewhere and expect to get an interview, or even to know who you might want to interview. You have to slow down and delve further into a place.
We were figuring things out.
And then the pandemic hit. I had never once in my life considered that a worldwide health emergency was a possibility. I might have had some vague recollection about there having been a pandemic back in the early 1900s, but I guess that I thought that disease had been eliminated or something. Of course, I know that there are still plenty of ways for death to come calling, but never did I think we’d see something like this. Overnight, it seemed, the world was shutting down. It was astonishing to go out on the roads and find them empty. Suddenly we were living in a dystopian novel.
As it happened, we had planned a respite anyway, a couple of months back in the Austin area to salve the road rash. We just didn’t know that it would become a reckoning with all of our life choices. I remember there being this feeling among many people that this was our opportunity to reassess our priorities as a society. I cynically laughed off the possibility that any widespread change might happen, but at the same time, with nothing better to do, I found myself looking inward.
What were we doing? Where were we going? And what did we intend to do once we got there? It became clear that when we’d set out a few months earlier, we were running away from a life that wasn’t altogether satisfying. We’d loved parts of it, of course, principally our friends and the vibrancy of life in Austin. But we’d wanted to get away from the aforementioned drudgery of trying to make ends meet in a not-altogether satisfying way. And we’d had some semblance of a plan, which was to do documentary work and travel. But we weren’t exactly headed towards anything in specific.
Of course, we’d succeeded at the traveling part and had great fun doing it. And though we hadn’t managed the documentary part, the idea of it still excited me. In fact, the reason we’d planned a pause in our travels was so that I could resurrect my old project, Gimme Back My Band. I will forever credit the pandemic for forcing me into a quiet space long enough to complete that film, and finally get it out into the world, which is exactly what I did in those next few months.
That work was also a good distraction from the dystopia unreeling outside the window. But I wasn’t unaware of what was going on out there. The zeitgeist of the moment and the long conversations I was having with Wendy and our housemates Michael and Harmony had me thinking about the state of the world and my place in it. Witnessing society becoming more fraught with divisiveness, and with no clear center to strive for, I wondered what could be done. Moreover, what could I do?
I remained committed to documentary work. And we had loved traveling, though we had nothing to show for it but memories. I had (and have) a backlog of ideas that I would like to see come to fruition. But where to start? I had a project queued up, about the creative process, and I’d done a good amount of research on the topic and had even done some preliminary interviews. But with in-person interaction seeming pretty iffy, I was thinking that now wasn’t a good time to go in that direction.
It was then that I started thinking about What Matters. As I may have mentioned before, I had for years harbored a vague notion about doing something concerning the things that bring meaning to people’s lives. Now, witnessing a society seemingly unmoored by a lack of common values, I began to wonder what that might look like. Is there a shred of shared sentiment among our schizophrenic populace? Does anyone really know, or even think about, the values that they hold at heart? If so, what are they?
Stilled by the sickness ravaging the world, I had inadvertently stumbled into the depths of my own psyche. Prompted by my own question, I wondered, What Matters to me? It should’ve been obvious to me that the world of ideas was interesting to me. Likewise, I might’ve sooner acknowledged that I wanted to consciously do good in the world. Even the things that I might’ve always known were important to me bore further examination; It was easy to see that even the values that I’d taken for granted, things like love and compassion, truth and justice, could use work. Looking inside like this, I saw that I hadn’t always been living in full accordance with my own higher self.
As I was starting to figure out, What Matters Matters.
It’s far too easy just to enter the fray of life without stopping to examine your choices. High school becomes college, then marriage, job, children, career, retirement, and then death. It’s what we’re programmed to do, and we seldom have or take the time to examine it. But maybe we ought to. If you were to stop long enough to look inside, how would that affect your life? What are the things that are most important to you? Are there parts of you that deserve further exploration? Do you have conflicting values, and if so, which of those are more important to you? Are you living your life in accordance with your most cherished ideals? How would your life look different if you were to do that?
Shouldn’t our lives be steeped in the principles that we hold most dear?
Of course, at some level, they often are, at least to some degree. When we create a family, at least if we do so consciously, that reflects our love of that very thing (and so much more can grow from that.) Our friendships reflect the importance that our fellow humans have in our hearts. Our love of art (in all its many forms) is an expression of the joy of creativity itself. But too often, an unexamined life is at a disconnect with our inner source.
As I sat there, while the world held its breath, waiting to discern what was going to happen next with the sickness enveloping the world, I did that work. What I found wasn’t entirely to my liking. Mind you, we were doing some things right. I felt no remorse at having turned away from what in the hands of someone else might have been an ordinary life. And our decision to pursue travel and the creative life was spot on for the way I wanted to see my life going. But the languorous pace at which I was moving was not in line with the narrowing distance of my life ahead. And, as I alluded to earlier, I found myself lacking in the expression of long-held ideals. For starters, I hadn’t done nearly enough in my life to articulate what little talent I have, in any form. I couldn’t even say with conviction that I’d ever properly manifested my feelings for the people that I deem closest, much less to the many whom I empathize with and feel simple human compassion for.
Of course, none of us can expect to be our best selves, least of all me. But what I can, and we can do is strive toward that goal. For me, that is manifesting as a sort of softer self, one more likely to express itself positively. That means being present for my relationships. It means trying to be less cynical. It means compassion for others, even when they’re doing something stupid in traffic. Most importantly in terms of this blog and my documentary work, it means that I’ve chosen to do something which both aligns with my personal values and expresses my creative self. Even better, it encourages others to burrow into their own inner selves and recon with what they find there.
Because What Matters Matters.