LONG STORY SHORT By Kristine McGowan One morning during our second week of life on the road, I woke up feeling sad. Yes, I missed our family and friends. But that wasn’t at the forefront of my mind when I rolled out of bed, plodded to the bathroom, and eyeballed the bird’s nest of hair atop my head. I felt worthless. One morning during our second week of life on the road, I woke up feeling sad.
Yes, I missed our family and friends. But that wasn’t at the forefront of my mind when I rolled out of bed, plodded to the bathroom, and eyeballed the bird’s nest of hair atop my head. I felt worthless. I haven’t been working for a couple months now. And while I don’t regret my decision to quit my job and embark on this trip, it’s been difficult to adjust to this new norm. To put it mildly, I’ve always been a bit of an overachiever. (Feel free to gag, unless you’re my mother. If you’re my mother, then feel free to laugh your ass off.) In high school, I was a straight-A student. In college, I worked 10-hour days at the student newspaper while double majoring and completing requirements for the President’s Scholars Program and the University Honors Program. And in my technical-writing jobs, I volunteered for every additional responsibility I could, and I managed to earn awards almost every year. That sounds like bragging, because—well. It is. But behind those straight A’s was a girl who would sometimes—OK, Mom, I mean often—cry when she couldn’t get her project to look just the way she wanted. Behind that double-major was a young woman who started pulling her own hair out without realizing it. And behind that technical writer was someone who devoted a lot of time and energy to wondering if she was being useful enough. That’s the crux here. Being useful. Or, really, feeling useful. I have a habit of assessing my days in terms of productivity. What did I do today? Was it enough? Somewhere in the last nine years, this question snuck in there, too: Did I make any money today? Whoof. If the answer to any of those questions was not much or no, I would feel pretty shitty about myself. That’s one reason why I found it so difficult to leave my job. If I wasn’t working, how could I be productive or useful to other people? If I’m not being paid, how do I know I’m being useful? How do I know I’m worthy of the air I’m breathing? As you’re probably thinking, that’s a rather unhealthy mindset. More importantly, it’s wrong. Plenty of people perform valuable work that doesn’t earn them a penny. Stay-at-home parents. Caregivers looking after loved ones. Volunteers cleaning up our beaches, running our homeless centers, keeping visitors safe in our national parks. Also, it’s gross. It’s capitalism, ingrained in the synapses of my brain. Trying to convince me that if I’m not working, I may as well be dead. I’m trying to devote some time each day to changing my mindset. While I do think everyone should endeavor to make a meaningful contribution to the society we live in, I don’t think our contributions need dollar values assigned to them to make them meaningful. A meaningful contribution can earn you a paycheck. Or it can earn you a smile from a stranger who was having a rough day before you stopped whatever you were doing to have a chat with them. As I did this morning, when our campground host swung by on her mission to scrape up loose garbage from each campsite in nearly triple-digit temperatures. That’s the kind of meaning I want to find on this trip. I want to make strangers smile. I want to make my husband laugh. I want to make my cat purr. And I want to write the kind of stuff I’ve been wanting to write for years. And hey, if you’ve read this far—my day must have been worth something, right?
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