That’s easy to say after four months off. We’ve been given the gift of zen and insight now, without the distraction of work. The mind requires a certain about of stress though, and fabricates its own if you don’t feed it. I hoped we would work through that reliance on stress and see what comes out, on the other side.

I went without my cell phone for three months, in part to see what it was like. It was pretty easy: there were only a couple times it would have come in handy, but I don’t even remember why.

Yesterday, I got it reactivated. The clock was still on German time, and I couldn’t connect to the network, so I pushed the factory reset button to clear all the settings. That’s what it feels like we’ve done to ourselves, by taking all this time off from work and living abroad.

For starters, our Honda Pilot is too big. There is no need to drive a car that size. We knew this going in, but we did it anyway. It’s a status symbol we create for ourselves that’s reinforced all around us by our culture.

Despite this, I toiled for hours over the Pilot, and worked my fingertips raw rubbing the pine pitch off the body. It was parked under a large pine tree that’s been dripping sap for months, and so the car looks like it’s been shat upon – but what’s worse, it’s a sticky pine pitch that won’t come off without hours of elbow grease, and bottles of Turtle Wax bug and tar remover.

It’s 6:30 in the morning and we’ve been up since 3 a.m. Charlotte wet through, and we had to dig through luggage to find a new outfit. We capitalized on the time to unpack, and we’re almost done. “This is the Day” came on KEXP at 6 a.m., and inspired me to play more of Matt Johnson on my iPod.

Categories: Diary

Tags: life, thoughts