I was on the phone with a friend while packing up my hotel room last week and she asked me what I was doing to entertain myself on this road trip. The question stymied me. I had to think for a long moment. What have I been doing to entertain myself?
I have been talking to myself.
I can’t think of any other time in my life where I have spent this much time with myself. This seems an odd thing to say; after all, I am always with myself. But there is a difference between being physically present and thoughtfully present. Before taking this creative break and setting off on this road trip, my days were filled with many external responsibilities and entertainments. Listening to the news during breakfast, enjoying music while walking Leo the hound, reading a book during lunch. I had four email inboxes that were constantly growing and clamoring for my attention and my work hours were filled with answering questions from my team, working on projects, writing reports, and chasing the next client to keep it all going.
Now? This trip has felt like driving in one of those meditation tanks where you float in salt water and are insulated from every outside sound. The Blue Car is my Thought Box.
I just reread that last paragraph and I am laughing. Anyone who is reading this who has ever been inside a vintage air-cooled Porsche on a highway with the windows down, is laughing too.
In early September, at the start of my journey, it was 95 degrees and 90% humidity. I was driving over rough roads checkered with potholes and cracked asphalt in the Hudson River Valley of New York. As the sun burned down and the sweat poured off me in the black interior of the Blue Car, the door window that was off its track rattled loudly, and I had one thought: “The Cyclone.”
About fifteen years ago, maybe longer now, I was at Coney Island with the kids and we went on The Cyclone. It’s not the fastest roller coaster. It doesn’t have the steep drops or loop-the-loops of other coasters. But it is the roughest, most visceral, knock-your-socks-off coaster I have ever been on. The wooden structure creaked and groaned, the cars had no cushions, there were no cushy pads holding me down. I was thrown against hard edges and lifted from my seat and in suspense the entire ride. I was aware of every movement, every sound. I was traveling so fast through space, but my body and mind were rooted in the present moment and feeling every single bit of it, the good and the bad, with a razor-like focus.
The Blue Car has no power steering, poor sound insulation, no cruise control, a loud engine, and cheap door speakers that are hardly worth the effort. There is no air conditioning except for the natural kind, so for most of my trip out to the west coast and through the deserts of Nevada and Utah, I have had the windows down. This isn’t a creampuff of a ride in a car that surrounds me with crystal clear music and isolates and insulates me from the world around me. It’s noisy and rough and I am feeling and hearing every mile of roadway, every minute behind the steering wheel. Like that Cyclone ride, I am very much in the present moment, focused with all my senses.
It happened so organically that I hadn’t thought much about it until my friend asked me how I was entertaining myself. I started with all the things I wasn’t doing. Those “winding road” and “rainy day” and “sing along” playlists I made back in August have gone mostly un-played. I haven’t listened to a single audio book or pod cast. With both windows open at highway speeds, the wind and road noise don’t make for good phone conversations.
This is not my usual driving mode. In the car for more than 10 minutes? What book should I listen to, what playlist suits my mood for the day? But after the first playlist I blasted as I drove out of my driveway on September 1st (singing along at the top of my lungs) the car stereo has been mostly silent.
I get behind the wheel of the Blue Car, turn the key, and drive. The thoughts just flow. I have memories, aspirations and questions to consider, new scenery to contemplate. I am even dredging up bad jokes (friends beware!). I have been behind the wheel for over 200 hours, over 10,000 miles, talking to myself. I can’t even describe how fabulous it has been.
I haven’t gone anti-social. I don’t want to exist like this forever. I like people and immersing myself in community; being social feeds my soul in important ways. But this time alone has caused me to look back and ask an uncomfortable question. Were all the distractions, busy-ness, and always saying yes my clever ways of avoiding being alone with myself? This is hard to ponder. I am the independent one. I have always loved time alone as much as I love being around people. And yet, I had left so little room for it. So little room to be thoughtfully, really present. There was a time when it made sense that I was on that treadmill. I was a single mom with little kids; I had demanding work and a house and the Blue Car to take care of. But it didn’t stop, when it could have; a switch had gone on and stayed on.
Until now. Here I am, in the Blue Car, just driving. And talking to myself.
It is glorious.
-Susan Silberberg, mile 200,287
