The Back Pack: Just Say Yes
“You have to leave on February 29. That way you’ll always remember it.”
So said my friend Hashbrown upon hearing my plan to pack up my life and hit the open road on March 1. I had paid rent through the end of February, so I figured why sacrifice that last night?
But he was right. An unusual occasion calls for an unusual date, and cramming everything you need for the next several months (years?) into an electric blue 2012 Ford Fusion is every bit of unusual.
The plan is to have no plan, or at least not one that’s overly prescriptive. My next book, a 103,000-word reflection on the humanity of 1980s WWF wrestlers called The Six Pack, comes out April 2. It’s really good. (I hope you’ll pre-order, order, and post-order it because doing so is the only way my book writing career will continue.) I’ll be doing a series of book events/signings throughout the east coast and Midwest to have the in-person experience I was robbed of by the pandemic when The Wax Pack debuted. Come out and see me.
From there, I have no idea where I’ll go, other than I’ll bounce from town to town, staying in short-term rentals for 2-3 months, pursuing the writing and editing projects that inspire me (another book? Longform articles? We’ll see.). I’ve made a habit of writing books with the subtitle “on the open road in search of…” but now the open road is my home for the foreseeable future.
It seems right, the timing of it all. I’ve been asked countless times over the past few months how I’m feeling, and the answer is: I feel a lot like I felt when I graduated from college with nothing more than a part-time unpaid internship at Islands magazine, located 3,000 miles from my hometown in a city I had never visited.
Twenty-two years later, I have no more attachments than I did then. I don’t own a home; I’m single; I don’t have kids; I don’t have a traditional paying job; I have a few more duckets in the bank but not life-changing money. Many would look at that list and consider their lives a failure. I look at it and see freedom.
It won’t be this way forever. “Everything peaks and everything ends,” my friend Jesse “Brouillard” Brouillard is fond of saying. I’m firmly middle-aged, and the ultimate freedom will one day come for me as it does for everyone (to Jesse’s brother Adam: I’m not talking about your eponymous 1970s Volkswagen bus).
Which brings me to my final point: In the past 24 hours, I have received unexpected gifts in the form of wisdom from two people I don’t even know that well, but who I admire. During farewell drinks at Mad Oak in downtown Oakland last night, my friend Matty Ice shared his philosophy of saying “yes:” When opportunities come up to do new things or invites arise for new adventures, say yes.
As a secret introvert who loves to say no, this was a timely reminder of the need for all of us to open up.
The other gift is an email I read half an hour ago. While doomscrolling through my Peralta Colleges inbox, deleting emails with the enthusiasm of a trail guide slashing their way through the bush, I paused when I came upon the name Jeff Sanceri. I like Jeff. He’s the president of my former faculty union, the Peralta Federation of Teachers, and more importantly, a good guy. I opened it up.
What I found inside was a message written by my former faculty colleague, the now-late Mary Shaughnessy.
The news of her passing jarred me, because it seems that not that long ago I saw her shimmying across the floor to silence at a faculty function at nine in the morning. Mary didn’t need music to dance; the beat was all around her, always.
Apparently she died of thyroid cancer. Particularly cruel because Mary’s charm came from the lilt in her words.
There are few things more profoundly sad then reading a letter someone wrote before they passed, knowing they were going to die, after they are gone. I can’t paraphrase, so here’s an excerpt of what she said, referencing the sons she leaves behind:
“I talk to everyone. I love people and I love their stories and I love to build bridges that connect people to me and to each other. I ask the cashier if they are in school. I ask the waiter what their favorite dish is. I comment on the mail carriers shoes. I laugh with people. I smile at people. I make friends with the customer service rep on the phone. I say their names and ask how the weather is where they are. Do you think my boys notice this? I know this annoys them now but I hope they will remember it fondly when I am gone. I want them to be curious about the people around them, to relish in our shared humanity.”
Yes, Mary Shaughnessy. Yes.
