My days are so much better now that I don't consume that garbage and feel the outrage that wells up by the very hearing and seeing of it.
It seems like the entire nation is in a funk. I know because I've been around the last year, as part of my stress-relief program. I wish everyone could do what I was able to do, which is that I let my apartment lease go (paid for that, too) after working the November midterms as a PC, and I packed my hybrid Optima with only those things that I truly needed, and nothing else. And I drove away. I traveled the southern half of the country, with a brief excursion to NYC to see the Thanksgiving Day Parade for the first time in person.
I saw family. I made friends. I reunited with friends, new and old. I sought out beauty and beautiful places. I visited old haunts and (since we moved often when I was a kid) towns where I had lived in the past. I explored and I rested, all the along the way. I took pictures of flowers, animals, and vistas. Something about the ocean calms me and I love hanging out on piers, so there was plenty of that from New Jersey to Maryland to Virginia to North and South Carolina to Florida and all the way to Santa Monica and its famous pier. I camped out all along the way, from the Eastern Shore to the Arizona desert, where I met up with lots of friends for two weeks of camping, cooking, partying, and celebrating life. I listened only to music, no talk radio.
And, nowhere along the way was I exposed to anyone who wanted to talk about politics. Indeed, it was as if everyone was avoiding any such discussion as if it were The Plague. Thankfully! Still, it felt as if there was a definite funk, compared to past travels, which weren't nearly as extensive but which had the nation feeling much more vibrant. Thank you, President Obama!
Now I'm back home in DFW, more to meet some pressing work responsibilities and to plan my next adventure, which will be to get back into my car and begin my tour of the northern tier of states, beginning in late May at Reno/Lake Tahoe, after a camping stop to hang with friends in Colorado. I will explore northern CA then up through Oregon and Washington, Montana, all the way across in time to see the fall colors in Vermont.
I wish everyone could do what I've been doing and what I have planned. It's a great way to get away from the constant outrage and feeling of desperation and helplessness that comes from the manipulation of the media and, more specifically, corporate news manipulation and obfuscation.
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