Several weeks ago, as I was headed south on I-75 to Florida, it dawned on me. It was twenty years ago that I made this drive for the first time. Since then, I’ve made it dozens of times, painfully aware of every state trooper hideaway, and making pitstops at mostly the same exits every time. For more than half my life, driving between central Florida and east Tennessee has been a semi-annual tradition.
It all started back in September 2003, with a road trip to a one-year Bible institute just north of Tampa. Nineteen year old me didn’t have clear aspirations for the future, which was part of why I was up for essentially another gap year before really starting college.1 Tampa had a better music scene, a MLB team (a generous designation for the Rays at that time), and was near the beach (or least within a reasonable drive). If the Bible college had been in say, upstate New York, it would have been a much less attractive option as a place to figure things out.2
There have been many ups and downs, twists and turns, and unfortunately a few crashes since that decision to head down I-75. Yet here I was, making the same drive, also in a Toyota Camry, but returning home instead of leaving it. And, taking into account that the week before I had actually left Florida to drive to Dallas for the first week of class, I guess I was also leaving school instead of going there.
When I made it back to Florida, I got on Amazon and re-ordered The Critical Journey.3 I say “re-ordered” because I originally ordered it last September, while on a trip to Knoxville.4 USPS ultimately lost the package though, and for some reason I didn’t try again until now. It stayed in the back of my mind, and in light of our staff discussions at NewCity around Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, I thought it might be a good companion read for that book.5
After reading it, almost in one sitting, I don’t think it’s an understatement to say it changed how I think of the last twenty years of my life. Not down to the details necessarily, but certainly at the level of how the phases of my life fit together. It helped me make sense of not only where I’ve been, but where I am now. And, it seemed like it gave me an overarching structure to use in actually telling the story on Arriving Somewhere that I started to tell earlier this year.
As I’ve mentioned before, road trips have served as a kind of autobiographical frame of reference for me. Once I moved away from Knoxville, they were my primary way of returning home. It was cheaper than flying, and the drive gave me space to process life. Most of the time, I’m stuck in the present, thinking about what needs to get done. My routines can quickly become ruts and it can lead to a comfortably numb existence where I’m not really reflecting on where I’m headed or where I’ve been. Road trips break this pattern up, and the flow state I’m able to enter into accelerates processing the past and imagining the future.6
As I’m writing this, I’m about to head off for another adventure. It’s a companion trip to the one I took back at the end of April. I never fully processed that trip here, but quite a bit happened. I’m hoping for a similar kind of experience this time around, but with a bit more of an agenda than last time. It’s a bit cliche, but I’m trying to engineer a mountaintop experience to solidify some things that I think will be necessary for the path forward.
To do that, I’m driving 1500 miles away to a literal mountain, to be there for a solar eclipse. At least I’m hoping that’s what ends up happening. If anything, I’ve learned that not every trip unfolds as planned. But, that’s kind of how life works, and that’s certainly how mine has worked so far. I had been a place of shame as it relates to that, but after reading The Critical Journey, I’ve started to think about things in a new light.7
Over these next several weeks and months, I want to explain why that’s the case. I’ll tell you more about the book, connect it to my own journey, and hopefully not bore you with too many travel details along the way. I’m still trying to make sense of things, but I do feel like I had a significant breakthrough over the course of September. October is occupies a special place in the story, so it only makes sense to kick this one off with a road trip. Before getting to that though, I need to explain what the wall is, why many people don’t go through it, and how I’m hoping to make sure that’s not the case for me.
I graduated high school in 2002, but opted to spend the first year after high school working full time at Lowe’s and making music in my spare time. More people should take gap years if you’re not really sure about the next step. There’s no prize for graduating high school early or finishing college before everyone else. You just make what could be your last carefree years unnecessarily busy and stressful, setting yourself up for a pattern of living that will come back to haunt you in your thirties (or sooner).
Jokes on me because I ended up in upstate New York anyway the following year. The music scene was marginal, the MLB team was 4 hours away (and it was the Yankees), and beach was frozen several months out of the year. All in all, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I’ll get to that later.
Shoutout to Ben Kandt for recommending it to me in light of some of our discussions about Christian growth and discipleship. Sorry I’m just now reading it Ben, but I gave it a hard sell to Damein, so hopefully he’s reading it soon too.
Not a surprise given how you can see my thinking unfold while on road trips. That particular trip was the first experiment of taking Albi on a road trip, inspired in part by reading John Steinbeck’s classic Travels With Charley.
This was a correct assessment on my part.
I should say a bit more about what a flow state is. Its a psychological state that you can enter into when what you’re doing is enjoyable and provides the optimal level of challenge. If it’s too hard, you get frustrated. If it’s too easy you get bored. Driving in general doesn’t do this because there’s too much starting and stopping (not to mention traffic). I like to leave for road trips when it’s still dark, and by sunrise, I’ve usually achieved flow. It usually lasts until Atlanta if I’m driving to Knoxville, or Mobile if I’m driving to Dallas. However thought it was a good idea for a major interstate to have to go through a tunnel in the middle of downtown should be publicly executed.
I’m probably just scratching the surface of how shame works to animate my thinking, feeling, and acting. I found Curt Thompson’s The Soul of Shame a helpful starting point for understanding the effects of shame in a general sense.