Me And My Pesky Gypsy Soul
Its not a healthy thing….
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had fantasies about running away. There’s something about the idea of escape — the risks, the dangers, the possible adventures — that has always stirred my soul. A soul that wants to put down roots, settle down, and enjoy a simple, worry-free life, but is also terrified to put its day dreams permanently on a shelf.
I dislike thinking of it as wanderlust, or a wild spirit, or a gypsy soul. Nothing you could paint with a stencil to trend up your sad apartment. Nothing that would evoke romantic images of lone cowboys, or wandering tribal nations with their bright wagons and painted tents. This is real life, and I’m just trying to live mine as best I can in spite of my own curiosity and longing for new experiences.
For me, this sensation that so many people might sigh wistfully over — waaaaaandeeeerluuuuuust — has turned out to be a massive character flaw. I have a tendency to throw my entire self into whatever it is I’m doing. Crafts, books, jobs, naps, you name it, I pour my body and soul into the experience. I soak it up like a sponge, and enjoy every minute of it.
Until I’ve maxed it out. I hit a wall, come to a dead end, complete the project, and there’s nowhere left to go. Nothing left to do but do more of the same thing I just did, over and over and over and over again. That’s what a hobby is. It’s what a job that makes money to pay your bills is.
But I get. So. DAMN. BOOOOOOOORED.
I’ve planned for many years to own my own restaurant someday. Multiple restaurants, in fact. But the thought that I would have to settle on a permanent core menu, and serve the same dishes for the rest of the joint’s useful life makes my stomach churn every time I return to face it. I like the concepts I’ve come up with for myself, and the food is going to be excellent, of course. Still… To never change again? To have to make a choice and never be able to go back?
I know, I just described life, itself. But just thinking of it — prepping the same 15 items, to serve the same five dishes, and taking the same inventories and calling them in to the same three purveyors; setting the same 100 table settings and putting up the same 100 chairs at the same 30+ tables; sweeping the same floors, stocking the same bar with the same liquor, day in and day out for the rest of my life…
It weighs on my soul that very quickly, I’ll find myself just going through the motions. I’ll have them down pat, and all I’ll have to do is do them for the business to run smoothly. And as a restaurateur, isn’t that what you aim for? There is so little time for extra. So little room to grow and change and try new things for the hell of it.
Monotony makes restaurants run right. I told myself a long time ago to grow up and deal with it, because that’s an inevitable part of the job. Most adults revel in routines like this, so they don’t have to think too hard about anything but getting the job done right. I feel that, but it’s just not my flex. In fact, it makes me want to gouge my eyes out, just so I have an excuse to leave it all behind and start something completely, radically new.
So that we are clear, this is not a healthy personality trait when you are in your late 20’s, medicated for (possibly manic) depression, and buried in student and credit card debt. Roots are a desperately needed, literal lifeline in this situation. It’s a slow and deliberate climb, but holding steady is what gets you out of the valley and back on the road. But then there is the boredom, the crushing despair, and the aching wish to somehow duck out from underneath that cloud and make a break for it. To run and run until you fall flat on your face, and pray that you lost it behind you somewhere.
I wish with all my heart that healing was that easy. I know from personal experience, escape just makes things ten times worse. No amount of packing some clothes in a bag and running away from home ever solved any of my problems.
Besides, I’d end up filling out a new W2 every several months or so, and just thinking about that is exhausting.
I try to find small adventures in my normal, every day life that rarely changes. Its usually no bigger than deciding which coffee house to visit that day, or the latest update on a YouTube channel I follow, or the orders I pick up as an Instacart shopper. Little things I do all the time, but never the same twice. You never know who you might meet, or what you might be inspired by, or if there’s an accident and a 20-car pileup waiting for you around the bend and a new song you’ll hear on the radio because of it. You never know, and that adds a pinch of salt to things.
An adventure can be walking into Target with $3 in hand for a drink, but strolling around and just admiring the aesthetic of their new merchandise.
Running away can look like a few hours’ trip to the mall, drifting in and out of department stores and remembering good times with aunts, cousins, and Grammy.
And escape can come in the form of a dumb mobile game that I swear is the closest to Dragon Land I will ever get in this life.
It’s not always satisfactory, but it gets me through. Having roots is much less frustrating when you find things to look forward to. Someday, when I’m able to roll around like the tumbleweed I truly am, that freedom will be all the sweeter for it.
