Feeling Paralyzed

I was sitting in my car feeling paralyzed. My brain had stopped functioning, my arms and legs felt like noodles and I couldn’t do anything except just literally sit there and breath. I didn’t know what to do next.

I had finally made it to the Rockies. After months of thinking about it and making and executing plans, it was over. And suddenly I realized that I hadn’t made any more plans after that. So literally, I didn’t know what to do next. The buffer was empty and was getting no more new input. So I pulled the car over outside the the library in Colorado Springs, found a parking space and just stopped. And then I cried a little and then I just spent more time blankly sitting there. I texted Cindy. “I’m here, now what?”

I don’t know precisely when it was while I was in France that I decided that my European trip was over. Cindy was going to continue on with the dogs but I was going back to the US. I wanted something easy I thought. I wanted something familiar I thought. I wanted time to be alone and figure out what I wanted to do next with my life. And here it was. That journey was over and I didn’t have the foggiest idea about what to do next.

I think I took the words of Wayne Dyer too literally. Now that the dance was over, I was just idling about on the dance floor.

So I tried to do something familiar and went to a campsite that Cindy and I had been to years before. But they were full, and so was the next one. I thought OK, I'll get a hotel, get a shower, use the internet and regroup. But they were all far more shekels than I was willing to part with. Casting a wider net, I found a campground about an hour south and settled in for the night.

The next day I decided to stop moving. I stopped at a burrito joint with good wifi had a meal and found a place on the map that was close by to drive to. I would just let whatever was next come to me. I found a dispersed campsite just outside of Salida and let the forward momentum that had sustained me to this point bleed away. I put up my hammock, drank a beer, stared at the clouds and then finally went for a trail run to help clear my head. It's funny, when I thought about what my life would be like on the road, it comes surprisingly close to this exact moment. Sitting alone in the forest with everything I need to be self sustaining for a week on end, having trails to hike and run nearby, have shade for me and sun for my solar setup and to be able to listen to the wind flow through the aspen trees.

Once again, I've found that If I don’t try to force it, and be open to the day, it would provide all I needed. I stayed two days just soaking it up.