In the cool haze of morning light, I’m walking. Not to anywhere particular, just walking. Shoes hitting the dirt like a steady rhythm, beating out the thoughts rattling through my brain. There’s something about this world, this time, that feels so caught up in its own demise. Like it’s rushing toward some inevitable end, but here I am, on the road, not playing along. It’s not rebellion, not some kind of grand statement—I’m just moving. You know, like when we used to follow Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead from town to town, chasing that feeling. Never knowing exactly where we’d end up, but knowing it didn’t matter because we were part of something bigger.
People like to talk about their jobs, their bosses, their plans, but I never needed that structure. Once the Army days were behind me in the ’80s, I was free—27 years now of calling my own shots, working remote, doing it on my terms. No boss breathing down my neck. Just the road, just the rhythm of life unfolding in its own strange way. I think back to those Dead shows, to the days between, where time felt fluid, and all that mattered was the music, the connection, the freedom.
There’s this line in The Days Between that always stuck with me, hits me even now:
“When all we ever wanted
Was to learn and love and grow
Once we grew into our shoes
We told them where to go.”
That was it. Once we figured out who we were, we didn’t need anyone telling us how to live. We knew. We walked halfway around the world, chasing that glow, and maybe we didn’t find all the answers, but we gave it everything we had. Walked on mountain tops, barefoot in the snow. Gave the best we had to give, even if we’ll never fully know what that was. It’s a line that speaks to every step I take now, still out here, still walking.
I see the faces of people passing by, stuck in their nine-to-five grind, their routines strangling them like ties around their necks. They’re moving fast but going nowhere, locked into lives they didn’t choose. I feel for them, but I can’t stay in that space. I’m allergic to that straight-line path, the one they keep telling me to follow. So I drift out of it, let the system roll by like a car on the highway, while I’m sitting in the dust at the edge of the road, thumbing my way to who knows where.
I don’t need much. A few crumpled bills in my pocket, a cigarette when the mood hits, and a clear sky above. Maybe that’s why I keep going—it’s the freedom of it. The unpredictability. When you let go of needing everything to be in place, you start to realize the world has a kind of order that doesn’t follow their rules. You find beauty in the mess, in the imperfections, in the way the sun sets behind a broken fence or how the wind feels on your face after a rainstorm.
Out here, it’s quieter. Not the kind of quiet that suffocates, but the kind that lets you hear your own thoughts, raw and unfiltered. There’s no schedule to keep, no one pulling your strings. It’s just me, the earth, the sky, and whatever comes next. Some days it feels like a game, trying to stay a step ahead of the inevitable. But other days, it feels like maybe I’m the only one who’s figured it out. That life isn’t about climbing ladders or ticking boxes, but about the spaces in between, the times when you’re not following anyone’s plan but your own.
I know I’ll never fit in with their version of how things should be. And I don’t want to. There’s more life in the uncertainty, in the not knowing what comes next. The world keeps turning, and I keep moving, but not toward anything in particular. It’s enough to just be out here, free from the constraints, letting the road rise up to meet me. Maybe I’m lost, maybe I’m found—it doesn’t matter. As long as I’m out here, untethered, I’m alive in a way that no one stuck in that grind will ever understand.
I’m still out here now, an outlier.