You Can Travel on 10,000 Miles and Still Stay Where You Are

On trying to escape yourself

Photo by Let's go Together on Unsplash

It was late summer in Seattle.

The sun lit the Oz-green world well into the evening.

The mornings were wet, and rain would come again at least once each day I was there.

I woke in a hotel suite a short walk from the conference I was attending.

I was 30 years old.

I spent the week sipping Starbucks and viewing the city from the Space Needle and taking a trip to Mt. Rainier.

Each afternoon, I’d walk to Pike Place Market and buy flowers for my room, so they’d greet me by sunlight in the morning.

More than 2000 miles from my Nashville home, I had escaped.

For a moment, a dot in time, I was somewhere else. Could be someone else.

This was a place, I thought, I could go and become.

When I returned home, I looked for jobs there — I was in the dissertation phase of my Ph.D. and thought teaching college in Seattle would be incredible.

I’m on the second floor of a bar in Washington, D.C.

It’s a private event for a client.