A very good friend of mine got married on March 1st in Los Angeles. I thought it’d be cool to do a road trip to get there. My plan was to take the train down to New York City to visit my brother before renting a car and driving for seven days to Los Angeles. I’d then stay a couple days for the wedding and finally drive back to New York over another five days.
Everyone who I shared my plans with told me two things: “Wow! That’s awesome, I wish I could do the same some time” and, “round-trip! You’re crazy! That’s a lot of driving!” To me, doing this round-trip doubled the awesomeness; I love driving.
As I knew I’d spend 12 days driving the car alone, I expected to take the time to think and reflect on life and other random things. I also planned to listen to music the entire time, because that’s what you are supposed to do on a road trip.
Turns out, I ended up doing almost none of this. I just watched the road, hands on the wheel, cruise control on, looking out at the scenery here and there. I didn’t listen to any of the podcasts I wanted to catch up on and never had the epiphany I thought I’d have while reflecting on my life.
I’m a little disappointed about that. I say only a ‘little,’ because, nonetheless, I did learn a few lessons from that road trip. One is that it’s important to take breaks from your every day life. The past couple of years, I’ve been so busy that I stopped allocating free time in my schedule. That road trip showed me that I was due for a good break.