Journeys of a Wandering Wordsmith
Journey with me on my blog!
The Life of a Solo Traveling Boy
The life of a solo traveler is oh so solo: I wait solo in the airport, I sit solo on the flight, I drive solo in my rental car, I eat solo at campgrounds and in all restaurants (ie, In-N-Out four times), I walk solo down city streets, I hike solo down long silent trails, and I camp solo for longer, silenter nights. The life of a solo traveling boy can be oh so lonely, and also oh so glorious.
The Shadows Beneath this Epidermis
I’ve probably looked pretty average most of my life. I imagine most people wouldn’t bat an eye if they saw yet another skinny-fat white boy’s shirtless frame hiking in the wild. But body dysmorphia is real. Body image is a beast.
Let's Get Distracted and Lonely in Las Vegas
Is it a magical experience or humanity’s death knell? Will more and more glowing screens in our pockets and watches and eyewear and vehicles and living rooms and workplaces and city streets and hotels and casinos and concert venues be our ultimate doom? Will we start over one day, looking back with incredulity that we ever inundated our lives with this much distraction? These countless screens and polarizing social media that does more to disconnect us from one another and tear us away from this present moment?
Journey of No Distractions: An Intro to BiGTRiP V
This year for BiGTRiP V, I flew to Las Vegas to rent a car and drive all over Utah and eastern Nevada to visit six national parks — a new personal record for park visits in such a span of time. I booked this trip several months ago without giving much thought to some logistics – namely, that mid-August temperatures in this region would top out at 105 Fahrenheit. Oops. No matter, I reassured myself; I'd just treat this year's BiGTRiP as a literal wilderness journey. This year, more than any other, I would escape to the undistracted wilderness and return to civilization a different man.
After Helene: And the Leaf Still Holds
Walking out your front door, you rarely consider how different life will be when you return home. When you walk back through that door. Like a portal, you leave one home behind ... and return to another altogether. On September 21, I left Asheville for a road trip to visit family and friends across Pennsylvania. On October 2, I returned home to a hellscape like nothing I'd ever seen.
That Time I Stood Up to a Homophobic, Transphobic Bully – Also, a Pastor
A storyteller I follow refers to his growth in the numerical unit of past iterations of himself. "That was eight Robs ago," he'd say of himself, back when he used to believe one thing or behave a totally different way. I've started viewing my own growth in this vein, thinking about all the Toms that have existed in this singular Tom, particularly with regard to this active-passive dynamic. My passivity has run especially true in matters of relational conflict. Given the option to fight a conflict or flight a conflict (please excuse my incorrect usage of a noun as a verb in the name of symmetry), I will flight nine times out of ten. Ah, but then there's always that one instance...
The Cost of New Creation (2024 Will Hurt)
Sometimes we speak things out, and they become true. Like we're wizards spinning magic into this world; our wands as our pens and mouths, created by a Creator with the same capacity to write and speak and do. Create. And then other times we declare bold things for our stories that do not come true. These goals, these new stories, these fuller versions of ourselves – well, they don't form as we hoped, if even they form at all.
Everybody Needs an Uncle Pat
I became an uncle six years ago, and Uncle Pat has always been my template for uncling. Because everyone needs an Uncle Pat. Someone to remember them on their birthdays, buy them Slurpees, ask about their lives, and drive them around on special journeys. If my nieces or future nephews ever have anything positive to say about their Uncle Tom, it will be because Uncle Pat showed me how to uncle well.
The Joys and Challenges of Traveling Solo Across Alaska
Here's a multi-faceted realization I've found in recent years: I absolutely love to travel solo — and most people absolutely do not. Traveling solo doesn't daunt me; indeed, it ignites something primal and wondrous in me. Comparing myself to how most other people travel, though, is another mountain: Why are they not like me? Why am I not at all like them?
Alaska, At Last
Back in 2020, in that early sliver of what was sure to be a promising year, I started making preliminary plans to visit Alaska. Known widely as "The Last Frontier" and my own final frontier, too. I’d traveled to 49 states since touching down in Hawaii a couple years prior, and it was time, at last, to conquer them all. Well. We all know why that trip didn’t happen. And it’s been plaguing me ever since. Three and a half years of longing for Alaska. Until now. I refuse to long any longer.
Four Seasons of America; Four Seasons of My Soul
Now months removed from this trip, I look back and notice something of a correlation with both the climate of these diverse corners of America and also the climate of my soul as I encountered each one...
Am I a Writer?
At the end of the day – or, rather, at each day's sacred start – despite all the excuses or hard realities, I must ask myself this question: am I a writer? Do I still self-identify as someone who writes? Because if I'm not doing that regularly – writing – am I, by definition, still a writer?
I Can't Believe I Came From Her
My grandmother died. These words rattle around my heart like pinballs that won't settle, even a week beyond her funeral. And yet I wonder if the settling of these pinballs would be any better – the finality of their lodging into the belly of that machine, no longer kept alive by another flap of the paddles. Mayme Alice was the last of my grandparents to leave this earth, and undoubtedly the one with whom I grew closest.
What About Bob's Son
I don't know anybody in Ukraine myself. But I do know someone – a few someones – you can be praying for stateside. I've been reminded of Bob from my Running To adventure. Remember Bob? Sure you do. He's the single dad from Maine, a university professor I found on Couchsurfing who asked if I was sure I'd had enough soup for dinner. Oh Bob. So folksy with that thick Maine accent. Bob never married but always wanted to be a dad. So, he adopted two sons: the older from Russia and the younger...from Ukraine.
The Year I Don't Wanna Look Back On (Again)
I don't want to look back on this year. Who would? This year was awful. This year made no sense. Much like its evil stepsister year before, this year isn't one I want to relive. Like, ever. And yet we are doomed to repeat history if we do not learn from it. It's true of societies, and it's true of individuals. As much as I want to forget most of 2021, I also want to learn from 2021 – desperately. The missteps. The failures. The doom. The gloom. What a tragedy for me – for you, for all of us – to enter 2022 or 2023 or 2087 and not learn a thing from 2021.
2021: Wasted
I look back on this year and can't help but feel the wince of apparent wasted time. The lethargy of a lingering pandemic, the apathy of my creative soul, and the heavy, sometimes brutal work of ministry. Of holding less and less tightly to relationships – even if it means letting some go. My 34 years of life feels increasingly like a bell curve. Isolation and worthlessness filling the lowly cracks of my adolescence; a rising wave of optimism for my twenties, filled with new friends and adventures aplenty; and a steady decline of ambition into my mid-thirties.
Our New Alivelihood
In one sense, how convenient for a pandemic to occur in the year 2020-21 and not 1920-21: for many of us to work remotely and stay "connected," at least in some sense of the word. But I've felt the strain of not experiencing a dimension beyond screens on screens on screens. Experiencing the dimensions of humanity and creation interwoven again. Last week, I saw humans with hats and cameras and boots and smiles walking all around me from the blues of Lake Tahoe to the beige of Death Valley. Humans: exploring, basking. Like we were ever ago made to do, like we evermore shall do.
Older Than Jesus
Growing up, Jesus always seemed so much older than me. Not like eighty or ninety or a hundred "old," but when you're only eight or nine, thirty years old feels a hundred years away. But now to have lived the ages of 30 to 33, I have a new perspective on the life of Jesus. Turns out he was way younger – and way stronger – than I'd thought. I've had a tumultuous three years; perhaps the most shaping three years of my life. Again, as a storyteller, I can't help drawing parallels with Jesus' thirties.
Do You See Me?
I did what You asked, I built what You told me to build, and it literally collapsed. So now what? Are You even there anymore? I feel the strain in Nathanael's voice. The wavering. A desperate pleading to be seen.
Beyond the Rot of This River
I've become more justice-minded in this year of isolation - to do something with this faith of mine. To borrow a vivid example from Ronald Rolheiser's "The Holy Longing": to not just retrieve dead bodies from the river, but to go upstream and find the source of all this death.