Road Update 1

Havre de Grace

Hello all. I meant to upload a post about the Washington and Old Dominion Trail but alas it got away from me and I’m still editing. Last week I walked from DC to Baltimore as the initial installment of my New York walk but then was called back to Washington to get new shoes and take care of some job-hunting stuff. I fear that while I’m on the road, updates may be sparse. I will at least make sure to regularly upload to TikTok and Instagram for those of you who like video content.

Bear with me while the posts are infrequent and I promise we will have lots of good stuff after the NYC plod. In the interest of providing something novel, I will post some of a piece I wrote while I was visiting family in California. I think it’s a bit juvenile, but then so am I. Anyways, it captures a motivation for the plod and goes someway to explain why I would spend so much time doing this when I should be finding a new job. Cheers.

“ Anemoia

I am at home this week, going through old stuff. The process has made some things snap into place about this project. Elite Straussian readers will already know that while Ploddington is ostensibly about walking it is actually an exploration of middle-aged frustration. 

After all, why would someone, particularly someone who has withheld commitment from jobs and relationships for two decades of adult life, suddenly walk ten miles a day? The answer is some combination of anger and deferred energy. 

Anger at what though? Believe it or not, this is where opening up old boxes and looking at pictures is instructive. Here’s an example: I look at pictures from 2008. I’m in China, an English teacher. I see photographs of the Canadian girl I dated and all the adorable little Chinese kids I taught. Where are they now?  I did not mean for these scenes to be one year of my life and then no more. I didn’t want to leave anywhere really, especially not the first place. 

The first place was high school. I know it’s a meme that if the place you were the most comfortable in your whole life is high school, you are arrested in your development and probably a capital “L” loser. So be it. My hometown was the only place I’ve ever felt known. And that knowness was hard won by the way. It was not because I was cool or the quarterback. It was because, after 18 years of fighting for identity, the consensus became that I was funny and maybe even a bit interesting. And then, without my consent, it was time to leave, to go our separate ways and to never be known that way again. Not to be hated or dismissed or derided but simply not known at all. Or to be known via professional reputation by strangers. Maybe I am juvenile, but only a different sort of adolescent thinks that is a real prize.

It’s fine that America is a country for the dynamic and ambitious. Good for all of you. But to all the Nietzscheans, vitalists, techno-optimists, and GDP maximizers let me remind you of something. It is fine if nobles are not interested in peasants, but you are supposed to offer us something. The historical deal as I understand it was that in exchange for withdrawing from the competition for power, in exchange for worshiping your gods and following your law, what we plebs get is stable identity and community.

No one in America gets this though. If you feel like it’s what you want more than a startup, or a million dollars, or your face on TV well all the worse for you. This is what I’m mad about and I’m speaking with my whole heart when I say that moving to new cities, trying to get jobs, and LinkedIn have done far more to sever me from the sacred and eternal than watching 9/11 live. 

If life in America is new friends and new jobs every five years then may my friends be birds and fish and my work be walking through a quiet forest. In September, we will walk from Washington to New York and withhold our power from civilization for another blessed fall.”