Convergence

I've been thinking a lot about who I was nearly 35 years ago. I have scraps of writing, bits of things I typed to friends as text and left on floppy disks for them to find. The old poems are collected. A manifesto crafted with a friend and never really forgotten dug back out. My eager, passionate writing comes back to me and it sometimes feels sophomoric or that I was raging at clouds. Trying, maybe as we all do, to figure it all out. 

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 threats to 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 rail about technology from a place probably adjacent to the Unabomber. I feel 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 that I'd silently and quickly slip into. The 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 and his Rucksack Revolution would, without conscious thought, become me throwing a North Face duffel in the overhead and setting off for yet another city or country. My vagabond life building around a notion I was trying to articulate from 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 I think 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 of building, of making money for others 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 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 the young Kevin Butler. With the stress of a career fading, his voice is still there, shouting, and perhaps I'm once again letting him speak, but this time I'm listening.