Matt

travel

Uncertainty — pleasant tension. No words, only inklings. No maps, only footsteps.

#travel

I took the train from Jacksonville, Florida to Portland, Oregon for the #AWP conference, where the Write.as team exhibited. This is the story of that journey.

Read everything up until this point: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3

Day 4

I woke somewhere in North Dakota, the waning gibbous moon looking at me across patchy snow-covered plains. The sun was slowly turning the eastern sky behind us orange and yellow; I pulled some levers under the seats in my roomette to slide them up out of “bed mode” and back into seats, then looked out the window for a while. I'd tell you what was on my mind, if those thoughts happened to be in English — but they weren't, so all I can say is that it was a very pretty morning.

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I'm taking the train from Jacksonville, Florida to Portland, Oregon for the AWP conference, where the Write.as team will exhibit. This is the story of that journey.

Previous: Day 1, Day 2

It's 3 am and we're going through... some city. Cleveland, I guess. Yep — Cleveland. My left hip is killing me. Somehow the arrangement of my limbs isn't only affecting the muscles around my hips, but also around my knee. Is my leg asleep, just not at the pins-and-needles stage yet? No idea, but it's stiff in ways I've never felt, so I have no idea how to fix it. Anyway, next stop: Chicago.

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I'm taking the train from Jacksonville, Florida to Portland, Oregon for the AWP conference, where the Write.as team will exhibit. This is the story of that journey.

Previous: Day 1 Next: Day 3


Sleep last night was punctuated by a sore hip, a stiff knee, a quick lateral jerk by the entire train, seemingly going faster than usual, I guess to make up time (it was about 40 minutes late getting into Jacksonville). With my footrest down and my legrest up, I slept about as good as anyone can in that position — my only enemy was a giant, undimmed light hanging over the vestibule door, shining directly into my eyes at my slightly-reclined angle. So I covered my head with a hoodie and slept quite deeply, between the random jarring moments.

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I'm taking the train from Jacksonville, Florida to Portland, Oregon for the AWP conference, where the Write.as team will exhibit. This is the story of that journey.

I love taking the train. I can't really remember when I started regularly riding it — sometime in the past six years of living in northern Florida. But I often get on the Silver Meteor or Silver Star for a relaxing trip up the east coast to visit family in the DC area. Whenever I travel abroad, it's my preferred mode of transportation — whether the Shinkansen in Japan or the many rail lines in Europe. I wish it was possible to travel the United States with the same ease as in those countries, but today I'm content that we have a passenger rail system at all.

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I recently found myself working 12+ hour days again, so I took these last two weeks to slow down, step back from work a bit, and enjoy time with family and friends. I'll be slowly ramping up again over this upcoming week, so we'll be back to full-speed again by next week.

I'm not usually one to divvy up my life into calendar years, but 2018 was a particularly impactful one for me, so I figure, what better time to do a little reflection than now?

I made some major life changes this year. ...Well, one in particular: I traded employee life for founder/boss-man/big-cheese/“maker” life back in February. I did a lot of traveling this year — some just me and my dog, some alone, some with good friends or family.

I started meeting more people, from my own city and others. I got stranded in Alabama as my old car broke down, and made friends with some mechanics. I got a tour of Asheville after showing up without a plan. I got too little sleep dancing and wrestling with locals in Reykjavik. I traded languages with new friends in Sevilla, and stories with Münchner, despite my sorely lacking German. I did some things for business and many for pleasure.

What I'm most excited about right now, this day in late December, is feeling like I'm finally hitting my stride. Besides having the time to build the things I want to this year, I've also had the space I need to grow up and out of old habits; to grab more control over how I spend my time and energy; to do things more deliberately. Many of my experiences and mishaps this year made me realize what I've been doing wrong for a much longer time, and what to do about those things.

One thing I've done over the past few months is go on a diet — partly to lose weight, and partly to eat less terrible food. I was never taught how to eat well as a kid — I didn't touch a vegetable and enjoy it until my mid-20s. But cutting out the sugar and beer and pasta for more whole, varied foods overall has got my body feeling better, and my mind more clear. I've lost a decent amount of weight, but more importantly, most mornings I actually wake up feeling refreshed and ready. When you eat like shit all of your life, this is a truly profound feeling.

One realization I had this year was that I've actually been doing something pretty serious this whole time, despite me not recognizing it — building these platforms and ideas and this business. I'm trying to seriously build something that will last. I'm seriously trying to continue doing that for the next few decades. I haven't felt that way about anything in my relatively short life thus far, so actually acknowledging it really affected me.

As I look to 2019, I'm optimistic. I can't wait to build more things, and help more people express themselves freely. I can't wait to meet more humans I've never known or only corresponded with through a screen — whether that's at FOSDEM 2019 in Brussels (February 2-3), AWP 2019 in Portland (March 27-30), or anywhere in between. I can't wait for what tomorrow holds, and I hope you can't either.

Happy New Year, everyone 🎉

#2019 #newyear2019 #personal #travel #work