31 Days in a Tent!

I am up at 4:30 am this morning stiff and creaky as hell – it is so stuffy in this place I can’t breathe.  Today is the first morning waking inside after 2 weeks in the tent.

I turn on the window air conditioner for some air and to drown out the noises of the city waking up and I take a look at the calendar and add up the days that I’ve slept in a tent since June 1.  I come up with 31 days – I thought it would be more.

Summer is over and I’m back to life whatever that may mean these days.  I am trying to make it as a writer but I’ve been traveling more than writing and am almost flat broke.  I simultaneously crave the stability of a paycheck and decent health insurance and the freedom of tossing out all my belongings but the essentials and kicking it out of my car for as long as possible.

You see outside is where I am truly happy.  I am not a city person and the only noises I want to hear in the morning are the birds and the incessant squirrel chatter not the sounds of a million oil guzzling machines making it up my street so they can shave a few seconds off their commute.  I can practically see into downtown office windows from my living room and the only bird I can hear in the morning is Frank (my little orphan cockatiel).

I remember a time when coming home felt good, but that was also a time when I believed that there was only one way to live.  I thought 2 weeks of vacation a year was the norm and that you should expect nothing more.  Now coming off of 2 months of travel – I want more.  People say that I’m so lucky and that some people don’t get to travel in their lifetime as much as I have in the last year and almost criticize me for my wandering heart.

I just say I’ve chosen my choice.

The thing with choices is that when you’ve chosen one you still think about what would have happened if you had chosen the other.  I still wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t dropped out of graduate school or if I hadn’t quit my stable office job, but the one thing I don’t wonder is if I’d be happier if I had followed any of those other routes because if I had I would have never had these past 2 months.

So what if I’m broke and so what if I have to endure the city life a little longer.  I will get used to the bed again I always do.  I will find a job waiting tables just a few nights a week and keep plugging away at the writing so I can do this all again next summer.  I will not lose the stoke.  I will not revert to a life that I detest.  I will continue carving a new way of life that I am proud of and accept my choice.