The GeekHiker

My parents are truly wonderful people.  And I’m not even saying that with some ulterior motive: as an only child, I don’t have to out-ass-kiss any siblings to try and get my share of the inheritance.  Yep, that’s a truly honest sentiment I’m expressing there.

Since I returned to the States in mid-July following, for lack of a better word, a bit of “drama” abroad, they’ve openly allowed me to stay at their place.  They’ve given me lodging, allowed me to park my car in their garage, start looking for work and my career path, and let me partake of their food.  All without charging me rent.

Which is why I’m pretty sure it makes me a horribly ungrateful bastard of a son to admit that living with my parents is driving me up the frakking wall.

Typing those words in, frankly, makes me feel like I’m writing the blog of a teenager and not someone who (supposedly) moved out on his own 20 years ago.  That’s the root of the problem, really: I’m so used to living on my own, to having my own space, that I’m not quite sure how to not have it again.  To some degree, it’s a cumulative thing as well: the last time I was truly living solo, ruling over my own space, was when I moved out of my apartment last July, and I haven’t gone to bed in an empty room/house since I started traveling in February, between houses and hostels and the like.

The upshot is that it’s had and odd and unexpected effect: throttling my creativity and motivation.  Whether it’s because life is actually too easy at the moment (not that I’m saying I want to trade it for being homeless on the streets or anything) or the fact that I’ve been in the close proximity of people for a long stretch of time, I can’t be sure.  All I do know is that I’ve felt strangely unmotivated on all fronts: be it blogging or writing about the trip, going through photographs or working on the job search, I’ve had to mentally force myself to engage with things, and to only varying degrees of success.  The aforementioned 18,000 photographs remain completely untouched, for example.

One the one hand, I want to think it’s simply an issue of space.  For the past few months, while I’ve been in hostel dorms and hotel rooms, I’ve been stuck interacting with people on a constant basis.  On balance, that experience has been a good thing, but in the context of this lack of motivation, not so much.  At my parent’s house, I do have the guest room, but it is most definitively the guest room: there’s little room for anything there besides the bed, it’s decorated with my parent’s decorations, the closets are filled with their things, and my parent’s feel free to knock on the door and chat anytime they choose.  There’s certainly no desk space for me to spread out multiple projects, leave anything I’m working on for any space of time, or have a guaranteed space of solo time in which to work.  As a remedy, I’ve been working at the less-distracting public library, but that too has its limitations: the space certainly isn’t private, and I can’t easily organize as everything has to go back into the backpack when I leave at closing time.

So, yes, space is an issue.

On the other hand, I think it’s also an issue that’s as old as time: the relationship between parents and their children.  Parents never really stop parenting their kids, and I think this is especially true in my case, being an only child and all that that entails.  And while it’s hard to complain about the caring and attention (after all, who in their right mind would complain about having parents who care deeply about their well-being?), the focus that comes with all that attention can be overpowering.  Although they’ve endeavored not to ask too often, they’re still curious about what I’m doing and what progress I’m making, and I know it’s always on their minds.  Ultimately, I end up feeling constantly on my toes, because I never know when (at dinner? in the morning? before I go to bed?) they might ask about my activity and progress on the job front, and that I should be prepared to answer.

I know what you’re thinking: that pressure is entirely self-imposed.  To some degree, yes.  The problem is that my parents are also my landlords, ones who aren’t charging me rent.  This leaves them in a vested, and valid, position of rightfully knowing that I’m not becoming a shiftless bum who intends to live in their (allegorical) basement forever.

Hope, though, may be on the horizon.

In a couple of weeks, I’m scheduled to move into a nearby apartment.  Admittedly, I’d like to move further, but as I don’t know where I’ll end up (my job-search-area essentially amounts to “The West Coast”), the fact that rent is somewhat cheaper here, I could get a short-term lease, and what’s left of my belongings are in a nearby storage facility, it seemed the most logical choice.  It still feels like the place I’m moving to is too expensive, but maybe that will be motivation as well.  Moreover, perhaps having a little bit of solo time, as well as my own workspace, we reinvigorate me.

Now, if I could just get rid of my fear: what if all my theories are wrong, and my malaise comes from a different source I haven’t yet thought of…?