I left home on January 5th, bright-eyed and bushy tailed. The plan was simple: drive for a month, pay bills, save some money, then actually enjoy the freedom. Maybe travel recreationally for a couple weeks. Maybe a month. See America on my terms instead of someone else’s.
Five and a half months later, none of that became reality.
My new world became drive an RV, drop it off, Uber to the airport, catch a flight, take a bus or train, pick up another RV, and repeat. Over and over again. I haven’t been home longer than 17 hours since January.
The exhaustion is crippling.
At first, I told myself I would create content from all of this. Film food. Film the road. Glamorize the strange lifestyle I had accidentally stepped into. I wanted to capture America through my eyes. That stopped sometime in February.
America is a beautiful place, but somewhere along the way it became empty.
The mountains still stand tall. The sunsets still hit the horizon like paintings. Trees sway in the wind across endless stretches of interstate. It’s all objectively beautiful, but after a while the beauty starts feeling hollow. Trees on the side of the road, grass rustling in the wind, beautiful in a disgustingly ugly way.
At some point, movement stopped feeling like freedom. I didn’t become a traveler. I became cargo.
What happens when you become trapped inside the machine you willingly stepped into? Rent doesn’t stop. The lights you seldom use still have to be paid for. The internet connection continues sending data across the world whether you are part of the handshake or not. The systems continue. The world continues. The stress compounds.
Eventually, you break.
Tears soak my somber face in a Flying J parking lot in Gretna, Nebraska. Miles stretch endlessly before me, and all I want to do is go home. Go home before there is no home left to go to.
But I can’t.
Is it my fault? Where did it all go wrong? Am I truly being as effective and efficient as I can be in a job that was supposed to reward effort?
I don’t know. Maybe the sacrifices are supposed to be different. Maybe somewhere along the way I confused survival with progress.
Or maybe this is simply what happens when freedom becomes labor.
I honestly can’t tell anymore.