Got a new job at a place where I might like to stay for awhile. “Awhile” meaning perhaps more than a year, throwing my previous idea about heading back east this summer into already obvious disarray. It’s a company here in Lynden that makes organic herbs and oils, similar to the company in Eugene that I courted a few months ago. And it is within walking distance of Classic Mike’s house, which is wildly improbable. Nothing is walking distance in Lynden. I’m maybe the only person in this town who walks to work in the morning.

So, I’m doing that. I’m still a temp worker and on a week-to-week contract, but chances are good that I’ll land a permanent gig at this business, which would mean finding a more permanent place to live in Lynden as well. Since doing that is going to signify, if not a 180, at least an abrupt 90 degree turn from where I’d been planning to go just two weeks ago, I’m keeping somewhat quiet on it until the Jenga tower stops swaying on this one.

Other news: The case fan in my Thinkpad is starting to go out. It’s not something I want to tinker with right now, and that means I’m only able to use my own laptop for brief bursts, moving around and off-loading files before its innards begin threatening to overheat. Considering the big extent that I rely on that thing as a communications tool, this coming month might be a quiet one for me.

Still wanting to get back into the routine of sending physical mail, still haven’t yet. This includes birthday & holiday thank-you cards, now 6 or 7 weeks delayed. Maybe less time on the machine will free up more time at the writing desk. Makes sense, but I’m surrounded all the time by such fun distractions that it’s not a sure thing. I just need to make time for it, and I will. Just needing to find my balance here.

I still haven’t mailed out thank-you cards for some very kind gifts my family sent to me in December; I worry that they consider me ingrateful.

I say all this as a preface to an apology. I’m sorry for not taking the time to communicate better. I would still love to hear more about what’s been going on in your lives. If you’re reading this there’s a great chance that I miss spending time with you, having conversations, playing games, and maybe even figuring out new things that we can work together towards.

I still don’t have the time and energy tonight to write everything I’d like to, but let me blurt a few things out before I head off to bed:

#1: I don’t particularly like this job I’m doing now, but it’s temporary. I’m doing it purely for the income. I’m saving money towards at least three different projects already: a food preservation business (which is my primary idea for that future “serious business” I announced last month and plan to found in 2017), a cohousing/goat-herding collective (Laurel’s current brainstorm, more of an uncertainty but something I’d truly love to see happen) and, though I’ve been debating for months now, I still want to buy a van.

#2: I’ll be leaving the West Coast this year (but not, by any means, forever). I’m planning to leave Washington by mid-May, spend another month doing temp-work in Oregon, then take a meandering road-trip in July, leaving from L.A. shortly after Independence Day and ending up in Maryland around August 5th for my friend Emily’s wedding.

#3: If I’m able– in other words, if I can find another temporary job– I’d like to return to Michigan from there and spend the next few months in my old ‘hood [the rural/suburban sprawl of Oakland County, north of Detroit].

#4: In December, I’d like to head down to Florida and visit my family. Not sure for how long exactly– December is the extent of my itinerary so far– but I’d like to spend at least a month there.

All told, my ambition is to visit 20 states this year– with the important caveat that I intend not to go broke doing it. I am in fact hoping to continue adding to my savings accounts each month in 2012, even while travelling, by living lightly and continuing to do temp work. As I keep promising, I have more I’d like to write about this. Soon.

I’ve been pushing on with my fall-back plans, searching around Medford for a suitable automobile that’d allow me to carry on here in Ashland, but at this point I’m not sure if I truly want to carry on w/ it.

Things in Ashland just are not working out. My job is numbing and tedious. The spot where I live is just a mile or two beyond a practical, enjoyable bike-commuting distance. I’ve made a few acquaintances here, but no real friendships as yet. And getting *anywhere* from Ashland without a car, even 15mi north to Medford, is proving to be annoyingly challenging.

The temperature’s hovering in the mid-30s today. I spent it pacing the short length of my RV or huddling besides my electric radiator, watching the wind blow the last leaves off the oak trees and considering my options.

I could buy a car, go deeper into debt, and continue on here in Ashland, trying to make things work. I’ve been trying to convince myself for weeks that this is the safest bet. Stay put, nose down, grow where you’re planted. “Yes it sucks but you got yourself into this mess and there are a lot of people worse off out there than you so just keep your head down and deal with it, kid.” That’s my Midwestern work-ethic talking. It’s not a voice I always trust, not in this instance. I’m at a point where nothing & no one is dependent on me. The only debts I owe are to faceless institutions. I’m willing to accept some risk and hardship by jumping into the unknown again rather than stick with a boring, frustrating known-quantity…

Option #2 I could fall forward towards California or somewhere else warm, keep looking for a place in the sun as I’d originally wanted to. I have friends in the Bay Area and LA. I have family in Florida and Phoenix. But Florida and Cali are foreign territory for me, and Phoenix is high on my list of places where I don’t want live again. Unless I was extremely lucky I’d likely go broke before I could set-up a new job & home, and I don’t want to be a burden on anyone…

Option #3 I could fall back to a place that’s familiar ground, regroup, and make another go of it next year…

Pace, pace… pace, pace…

I’m liking the sound of Option #3 more and more. I think it is time that I cut my loses and return to Bellingham for the winter.

Thanksgiving is coming up and Robert T will be driving my old Honda down from B’ham to visit our mutual friends in Eugene for the holiday. Our initial plan was for him to ferry the few boxes I still have in Bellingham down to me. Thinking about it more, it occurred to me that I could instead ask him to ferry me to the boxes. Back north to Washington, to my second home, the City of Subdued Excitement. (reminder: still my favorite city anywhere.)

This isn’t the definitive announcement. Just sharing a thought process here, more or less as it comes to me. I still want to sleep on this decision tonight. Tomorrow, if I’m still feeling it, I’ll need to start in on all the phone calls and logistics. As much as I love Bellingham, turning back after I’ve put so much effort into leaving is a hard, hard decision to make, and it brings along a whole jar of mixed emotions.

And a footnote to friends in Michigan: I really really miss you all too, and when I said “familiar ground” a return to the Midwest was also on my mind. It is soooo much farther away from me though, with far dicier prospects of finding suitable work & a place to live right away, that I had to cross it off the list for now. I’ll be back, hopefully for an extended stay, just as soon as I’m able.

Back-tracking is not the same as giving up.

~MWK/RP

The last couple months have been very work-in-progress. Generally I dislike talking about works-in-progress; rather, I’ve learned to distrust the impulse. It’s far too tempting to flesh out all the details of a plan and then take credit for having a good idea without actually accomplishing anything.

Let’s backtrack though. Before I get to where I’m going, here’s very briefly where I’ve been: Spent about 10 days in Leavenworth WA all told, hiking & camping, getting a feel for the town again. You may recall that one of my ideas for the winter was to work another season at Stevens Pass Ski Area near Leavenworth. I decided against it; I was only in Leavenworth a few days before it’s tourist-focused culture and fake-German shtick began to irritate me all over again.

I spent a fun weekend in Seattle. Saw the Nirvana and BSG exhibits at the EMP. Played Galaxy Truckers at Cafe Mox with Kelly O’Hara. Took in a block party w/ Ariel & Lambert and their pleasant neighbors. Had a pint of stout with Jack C before he took off for Black Rock City.

Caught a train to Portland and spent most of a week there, camping out in the back garden at Saladhouse and catching up with friends. Met baby Chase and Lettie Jane, hung-out with Riley Starr for the first time in years. Got a tour of the new Monster Palace. Rode the MAX to Hillsboro on a lark. Strolled the Last Thursday Alberta street-fair with Laurel hauling a satchel of sweet corn, on our way to Lettie’s [Best Summer Ever] art-opening/barbecue. Many small meetings, many good conversations.

Spent another couple weeks in Eugene, visiting Jen & Steve, exploring the town as a potential place to relocate and house-sitting while they were away in New York. Saw their daughter Caitlin off on her first day of kindergarten; that was pretty rad. This was late August/early September. My savings and the summer weather were both receding faster than I would’ve liked, and I was getting anxious to end the vacation portion of the summer and get back to work somewhere.

I took the Greyhound to Ashland in mid-September, planning to camp out in the Siskiyou National Forest near Mt Ashland while exploring the town. This was the one big, show-stopping goof of the summer: I didn’t discover until I got there that camping wasn’t allowed anywhere in the Ashland watershed– an 8-mile radius swath around and above town. Fortunately, I also discovered that I liked the place generally, so I abruptly changed plans, checked myself into a motel, and started looking for a job. Two weeks later, I got offered a production spot at [MaraNatha Natural Foods] in Ashland, makers of my favorite organic peanut butter.

This is where the work-in-progress problem starts to kick in. Things aren’t going as well as I’d like in Ashland. It’s taken a lot of focus and conviction not to get stuck in a work-in-progress morass. The job is easy enough, but it’s often dull. The studio I was renting is very cool but too expensive and a little too far from town (3-4 miles) for easy bike-commuting. I’ve since convinced the owner of the studio to let me move into her RV on the same five-acre property (a kind of upscale hobby-farm in the beautiful rolling hills outside of town, with 11 sheep, 2 horses, some chickens, dogs, etc). This is working out fine, but the RV has it’s own quirks and mechanical faults and that commute is still not ideal.

October has been a challenging month because of all this, working full-time at a new job, in an unfamiliar place, with little money. Trying to stay organized and keep moving forward while fighting down a daily to-do list of little miscues and glitches. There was also a [Horace Phair] in there too– which was great from start to finish and a nice break from the new grind. Folks at Horace Phair mentioned that it seemed as if my summer of vagabonding ended pretty abruptly, and it did, and all of this is why.

Fortunately– and I don’t ever use the word “fortunately” lightly; I am endlessly sickeningly thankful for the incredible run of good fortune I’ve had in this life– fortunately, I have been staying organized and moving forward, so I have some options. I’ll be going up to Eugene tomorrow. I have a job interview on Monday with an organic herb & tea distributor there called [Mountain Rose Herbs]. Excited about it, because it seems like a great company, and moving to Eugene would give me another chance to shift gears and take another pass at making this work.

The “this” in that sentence, the work-in-progress dream that I’ve been working towards, is to embrace the spirit of minimalism that I’m always preaching and get myself off the grid. Take the travel-light approach of this summer– “my continuing life of untrammeled adventure”, to claim Jenn’s adroit phrase– and carry it through the winter months. For that, I’m going to need a space that’s big enough to lie down in and insulated enough to heat. I could also use a long-distance winter vehicle, something that burns biodiesel maybe. Put the two together, and you’ve got a diesel van. I’ve had my eye on a [Volkswagen MV] for quite awhile now. Now that I’ll be working full-time for at least 6 months of so, in Ashland or Eugene– but hopefully in Eugene– there’s not much stopping me. Like Captain Mal, I’ve even got a name all picked out.

I’m hoping to get all of this wrapped-up and underway by Thanksgiving, and I’ll tell you all about it then. In fact, I was hoping to have all of this settled by the end of October, but it’s been quite an October.

‘Til then, [updates on Twitter] per usual, and occasional photos on [Flickr] (I haven’t been using my camera this fall as much as I’d like either). Also, now that I have my laptop back (thank you again, Rolo) I’ve been getting massive use out of the free music-on-demand service Spotify, and recently started up a Tumblr stream devoted to the once-declining art of listening-to-the-whole-album. Those updates go up late at night Mon-Fri, check it out if you’d like: [iwillnowsellfivecopiesof.tumblr.com]

~MK

Our final move-out inspection from our house (”the Satellite of Love” on Maryland St) is set for Wednesday of this week. My backpacking trip officially begins in four days(!), on Friday. I’m ready for it all, but my housemates aren’t yet, so I imagine I’ll be spending my last few official days in Bellingham helping them to scrabble around, get the house clean, and hench their stuff over to other parts of town (both Hunter & James will be remaining in Bellingham, just moving to different houses).

I keep saying “officially” because, while I’ll be living out of my backpack starting July 1 as planned, I won’t be leaving the Bellingham/Skagit area for another month now. Kevin convinced me to stay on at the mill through July, and so my last day as a miller won’t be until July 28th, just before my dad & sister arrive for a week-long visit on the 29th.

Making all of that work is going to require a fair bit of improvisation, but I feel that I’m equal to it. So many loose ends still remain untied, though, that I haven’t even had the spare mental capacity to get excited about this final countdown, let alone write about it here. This month has evaporated out from in front of me in a swirl of spreadsheets and checklists. I’m very glad that I’ll have another month or so to ease into a new routine. A new way of life, really.

I’ll try to fill in the details for you here just as soon as I can. Introspection is still tough tonight; it’ll be easier by the weekend, once I’m under way.

D-4 days and counting down.

Looking back, if you lump both illnesses together this has been the worst bug that I’ve ever experienced, even from childhood. Straight up the sickest I’ve been in my entire life. I guess I can be thankful that a prolonged flu is the worst sickness I’ve had to face in my 29 years? I’ve never claimed that I live anything other than a charmed life, you guys. Right now I just want to push all these dull, empty days aside and get back to what I was doing.

Today’s the vernal equinox, “first day of spring”, and it was a beautiful new morning. Some sunshine, warm, a little bit of breeze. As good a time as any to get up and press on.

So I’m getting up and pressing on. We’re rapidly coming up on 100 days until July 1, the day I leave town. This afternoon I took a stab at drafting a final gear checklist over on [the page I have for that]. Looks like I’ve collected about 60% of the items I plan to take on the walkabout. Or, coming at it the other way, in the next 100 days I’ll need to shed thousands of possessions that I won’t need and acquire the thirty-odd things that I will.

Looking over the list, I keep reassuring myself that all of the big-ticket items have been bought and paid-for, but there may still be lurking gotchas in there if I don’t keep an iron hand on the budget. I’m starting to regain a little of that unstoppable feeling along with my health, but this vagabond transition in July is still going to be a close-cut thing.

Tomorrow: back to the mill. This Friday: first night of camping in the Hennessy on Chuckanut? Ohmigosh that’d be amazing. Hope the weather (and my constitution) holds up.

I’m planning to take a shakedown hike through the San Juan Islands, then later in July I’ll be meeting up with my dad and sister at Sea-Tac and I’ll spend a week touring around NW Washington with them. After that I intend to hike the PCT from Mt Rainier to Cascade Locks, and west up the Gorge to Portland. From there, I’d like to hike farther south on the PCT from Mt Hood to Crater Lake. From there, who knows. I see trails, trains, and many long-missed friends and family members in my future.

I’d like to end up Back East eventually– I’ve never seen many of the east coast states, and most of my family lives in Florida now. I have old friends in the Carolinas and in Maryland who I haven’t seen in half-a-forever. Of course I’d love to get back to Michigan for an extended visit too. I likely won’t be able to fit all or most of that into this year, but starting this summer I aim to have lots of time on my hands and few obligations, and thus fewer excuses not to keep right on travelling. With luck, that’ll carry over well into next year and beyond. Remember: it’s always summer somewhere.

I plan to get back to Bellingham eventually– I love it here, after all– but it won’t be for quite some time, and it probably won’t be to stay.

I informed Kevin (the miller / my boss) on the first of the year; I’ve told my sister, mom & dad, a bunch of my local friends. They’ve all taken the news quite well. That’s been incredibly encouraging, thanks you all. (I’d been wanting to tell the rest of you all weeks ago, but haven’t had the time or energy to write this properly until now.)

I’ll try and explain my motivations more in later posts, but it all comes back to old ideas of living simply combined with post-industrial ideas about making a living through ingenuity. To quote [an influential document]: “Appropriate technology, green thinking, machines doing what machines do best, people doing what people do best.”

Those of you who know me know that I’ve been harboring such notions for quite some time. The big news isn’t that I’m leaving town on an extended backpacking trip to tromp around the States on foot. The big news is that I’ve picked a date.

July 1st 2011! Fourth of July weekend, baby. My phone has a little home-screen display that I’ve programmed to countdown the days. Today is D-165. Only twenty-three and a half weeks until July. In the meantime, I have a lot of preparing to do.

As I cryptically alluded last time, I have a New Year’s Resolution going to sleep outside one day out of every 7. Every Saturday, to be precise. It’s been coooold the past two weekends and I’ve chickened out, but this weekend I’m hoping to drive up to Lynden with some gear and camp out in a friend’s backyard at least.

This week I’ve also started switching my everyday diet over to trail foods– natural dry milk, good ol’ granola, organic dehydrated potato flakes, trail mix. Not a huge stretch away from my usual diet really, but I may as well start now.

I’m also leaving my car parked at home again this week and getting back to my daily routine of taking the commuter bus to Burlington then walking from Cook Road Park-N-Ride to the flour mill each morning. That’s about a 1.5 mile hike along the railroad grade– or 3 miles round-trip every day, with a light pack that I’ll gradually be filling to full travel weight. I put up some photos of my daily commute on Flickr yesterday; it’s actually quite a lovely walk most days (and of course I’ll be saving hundreds of dollars in gas money in the process). [Have a looksy].

In five and a half months, I aim to be ready to leave my cozy home here in the top-left corner of the map and get back out into the wider world again.

But right now the writing part of my brain just does not work mid-week. Honestly, it barely functions even in the best of times. After a day of pouring my energy into making flour, keeping current with my hobbies, and trying not to screw up any of the hundreds of other complex procedural and social interactions of my day, writing a blog post becomes a much more exhausting prospect.

Maybe I’ve said all this before, probably multiple times, but I just want to make it continually clear. Most weekday nights I am riding the yellow line between tired-and-happy or tired-and-grouchy. At that point, I hit a fork in the decision tree: I can either (A) start writing a blog post, run out of energy, become grouchy, and end up writing a grouchy blog post about how grouchy I am… or (B) snap closed the laptop, stay happy, and go do something else.

Most weekday nights I decide to stay happy and write nothing. Most weekend nights I’m doing something more interesting than plunking words into a text box and hitting “Publish”. But yet, I like having this website. I like having a platform for posting updates on my thoughts and whereabouts for other people to come to and read– or not– at their leisure.

How do I jive those two competing desires (to both have a blog and avoid the stress of blogging)? By continuing to refine how I manage my time and energy, probably. This year one of my three^* Resolutions is to update each of my web projects (this site, [HUD], and [Nodeslam]) on a weekly schedule. In order to make that happen, I’ve started to make some dear and drastic cuts to some of my other much-loved hobbies. “Reading sci-fi novels” is right out, cut from my agenda altogether (and I was just getting into [Perdido Street Station], too). “Reading webcomix and MtG news” has been relegated to Friday nights only (and there’s Mirrodin Besieged previews going on at [DailyMTG] right now, grawh, so hard to not click that link). Similarly, “Flickr” is now Sundays only, “play MtG w/ my nerd crew” is now Tuesdays, “prep/play an RPG” is Thursdays, and so on.

Once that new routine starts clicking in and kicking back dividends of unlocked time, I’m aiming to add “update ByM” to my Monday night agenda, “update Nodeslam” to Wednesdays, and “update HUD” on Mon-Fri.

Um…. so, I guess, see you next Monday? Or not. Changing one’s life momentum is a tricky business. I’ll keep working on it. Until then, no news is good news.

^* footnote: I like to make three (and only three) New Year’s Resolutions each year. My other two for 2011 are “Sleep outside one day out of seven” and “Pay off 50% of my remaining debt”. You can follow these and other boring goals– if you really want to– on [Heads-Up Display]. Yes, I’ll explain the sleep-outside thing next time.

Short version: I needed & got a root canal in one of my front teeth when I was a little kid. There is a gap at the top of that filling now, 15 years later, way up on the inside of the tooth. (Maybe it got worn away from the inside somehow, maybe it was just a bad filling and the gap was there at day 1). There is a colony of bacteria up there and it’s eating away at the bone. If I don’t– well, if a dentist doesn’t– drill out the old filling and put in a new one, the tooth is going to continue to hurt like a mofo and eventually fall out. I like to keep my teeth in my head thank you, so: root canal.

I’m not worried at all about the procedure. Heck, if the doc says I’m okay to drive, I’m planning to go straight on to the mill afterward & work the rest of the day. I guess it must mean you’re an adult when dentists stop being “pain scary” and start being “pocketbook scary”. What bums me out is the $900 blow to my savings account. That expense is going to implode my travel budget for the next few months, crumpling up whatever plans I may have had for getting away for the holidays. Buh-bye Thanksgiving in Oregon, see ya Christmas in Fort Myers.

Does that mean I’ll be moping around at home every weekend playing video games? Ha, nope. It just means I’ll be snowshoeing closer to home, suckas. And fortunately, “closer to home” just so happens to include Mt. Baker/Snoqualmie National Forest. And it just started snowing up on Kulshan on Monday. Check it out: [http://www.mtbaker.us/snow-report/conditions-photos]

As typical, I seem only to have time to write about the one lousy thing happening to me at any given time, and not the ten marvelous things that are happening all around it. Next entry will be all snowshoeing all the time, promise.

(And yes, I realize I never [finished my thought] vis-a-vis HUD and plans for next year. I’ve been talking informally to some of my more-local friends about next year’s plans, so bits of that info are now circulating out there. As for HUD, I’ve been so slampacked with work the last two months that my organizing-system has failed around the edges– I’m flying without instruments until I can get a bit of breathing space.)

Just need my body to not break in the next 9 days, and I’m golden.