Tipping Point

It’s November. My notoriously worst month. But I’ve already blogged enough about that.

Once again, November presents another tipping point for my life. Not a “bad” one, not a “good” one, just a … a regular old tipping point.

From January 1 to May 31, I was a resident of the state of California. I paid rent for an apartment, worked multiple part-time jobs, and experienced some semblance of a stable existence for five months.

And then I turned the tables on 2014.

On June 1, I took to the road and started racking up thousands of miles around the continent. On October 31, I spent the evening with a friend outside Lexington, Kentucky.

I woke up the next morning on the other side of a 2014 tipping point: five months in California, five months on the road.

It was November 1st, and the scales of my 2014 had officially tipped toward a nomadic existence over that long lost stable one.

I sorta knew this would happen way back in May. This whole “wandering aimlessly for the better part of the year” thing.

But it’s one thing to dream you’ll wander longer than you’ll stay put; it’s another to actually do it. To sleep on dozens of couches across North America and to watch your savings plummet the more gas stations you frequent.

Here I am now in the heart of November having accomplished just that. The tanktops are officially packed into the inner recesses of my car, my winter gear emerged from a trunk’s hibernation, and the trees are turning yellow and barren all around me.

From here on out, 2014 will officially be the Year of the Wandering. Literal and metaphorical wandering alike. I’ll more than likely be wandering into 2015, too.

At some point I will stop this wandering. Goodness, I hope I will stop.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m still inspired. I’m still excited for what lies around the bend.

I’m not tired.

I’m not weary.

But I am hungry. I am more than hungry, actually.

I hunger. I think I am starting to starve, just a little.

Looking around this Pennsylvanian coffee shop and this city I once called home, I am starving for a normalcy that resembles everyone else’s normalcy.

For the better part of 2014, my normalcy has featured climbing into a Mitsubishi Galant and gallivanting toward my next colorful adventure. A new city, a new friendship, or old ones reunited and rekindled.

I don’t mind that 2014 will forever be the Year of the Wandering. I am quite thrilled about this fact, actually. Proud.

But even though the new year to come will likely start with more wandering, I hope 2015 does not also become the Year of the Wandering. I pray for a discernible “Promised Land” moment in 2015.

I hope to sit and stay and eat in 2015. To satisfy this hunger burning deeper inside my gut with every passing mile and falling leaf.

Come 2015, I hope I cross a foreign yet altogether familiar tipping point. One that has me employed and paying rent and circling tables and living rooms with others.

A tipping point that lets my Galant and gallivanting soul find rest once again.