All I want in life right now is a road trip. Seven years ago (wait, what?) my roommate Emily and her boyfriend and I used our spring break to drive from New York to Chicago to Memphis — and all of those years since, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me what the happiest picture of me is located, because I knew I could immediately point them here.
Me, Emily, Garden of the Gods
Dave is not stoned, Garden of the Gods
Jurvis was away for a week, so I went through all of our closets and hiding spaces, and tried to dispose of anything I owned that I didn’t actually want or need. I burned all of my CDs to my iPod and dropped them off at the door of the Goodwill. I went through paperwork, old shoes, books and magazines. Five grocery bags of useful things I didn’t actually use, two garbage bags of detritus I had simply allowed to accumulate.
And I tried to create a semblance of the life I wanted to lead, to clear the cobwebs and fill a scrapbook of everything I had liked.
Full roadtrip album: here.
4 Comments
even though you may be morbidly unhappy now, goodwill is a good place to start. There is probably some kid now who’s going back to school in style now because of you.
Hey, I did cross country with Emily and Dave! They were both much, much faster than me. Which is probably not saying a lot.
Sometimes I think the key to life is to find that place that makes you most happy, and hold onto it forever.
You gave me a photo of you on this trip when I went away for the summer — I still have it, in a box somewhere. Since this was before digital cameras, this means that “giving me a photo” meant that you don’t have it anymore. Maybe next time I’m at my parents house, I’ll see if I can’t scan it for you — you certainly look happy in it!