Convergence
Frustrated by a feeling that my work was pointless, that I was making money for people that didn't know my name, a desire, fueled by Jack Kerouac and Robert Pirsig to roam. I was questioning freedom and security, worried that I would not figure it out.
I didn't figure it out. Maybe we are never supposed to figure it out.
We debated how money buys security, houses, 401k's, and threatened our sense of who we were. I shouted about shaking society to its foundation, living without possessions, trading our lives for some notion of security at the price of freedom, where looking back freedom was thought of rejection of the rules.
I railed about technology from a place probably adjacent to the Unabomber. I felt Thoreau as an inspiration in that naive 23 year old way. I was chafing at the expectations.
Looking back it was probably a rejection of the life-system I was sliding into: college -> good job -> wife -> house -> kids and on and on the hamster wheel moves. I stepped off the wheel at wife and house. The job I shaped as best I could.
Travel and freedom permeate the virtual coffee we were sharing. Jack Kerouac's Rucksack Revolution would, without conscious thought, became me throwing a North Face duffel in the overhead and setting off for yet another city or country. My vagabond life taking shape around a notion I was trying to articulate in 1994.
From the space of 33 years reading these post-adolescent rambles it is easy to laugh at my hubris. Perhaps it was simply dissatisfaction with my job, depression, or listlessness of soul. I don't know. I know I was trying to get at something that I couldn't fully speak. I was at a loss for words. I just knew I wasn't happy with the way things were.
Crafting a career of travel, innovation, and invention let that Kevin grow. I was happiest when I had autonomy over my work. I spent my travel frequently alone with only my thoughts in an airport lounge or airplane journaling. The result rewarded me in ways beyond simple dollars.
I made being a vagabond in a suit a real thing. My North Face hobo-sack over a shoulder, not riding the rails, but a jet on the skyway. I remember getting into Delhi after procuring a new passport in Frankfurt because India wouldn't let me enter without 2 empty visa pages. After two days of delay, I had enough time to sleep for 4 hours, get to clinic, train all day, have dinner at hotel, sleep 4 more hours, and return to the airport to fly back to Chicago. The frenetic pace of the trip, Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Delhi, Vancouver, Chicago would have appealed to Sal Paradise. I circumnavigated the world in less travel time than hitching west I'm sure.
I asked my question as I entered retirement. Now that I can be anything I want to be, what do I want to be? I don't have the answer, but I think looking to my old writing, maybe that lurks below the surface. If I could be anything I wanted, what would it be?
This post rambles in that vaguely incoherent way that would be familiar to young Kevin Butler. With the stress of a career fading, his voice is still there. This time, I'm listening.
