You really need to get out more

Remember COVID? I do. It sucked. Restaurants on lockdown. Playdates canceled. Masks were important (kinda?) - but mostly a huge pain in the ass.

The world was frozen. Travel was off the table.

Before we had kids, and before 2020, we heard stories of new parents taking their newborn to Italy or Spain for a few weeks. The perks were easy to understand:

• Baby food is mobile

• Babies basically sleep all day

• Babies fly free

But the pandemic ruined our plans. And I felt this strange sense of loss recently, being unable to stroll through Roman streets or tropical paradises. Think about all the pasta we left on the table.

My parents shared the joy of traveling to new places early on with us. We were lucky to visit China, Indonesia, Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, and Israel multiple times. I’m pretty certain I’ve visited more foreign countries than states in the US.

I caught the bug hard and ran with it. My wife and I have toured Central America, Southeast Asia, Italy from top to bottom, and most recently Japan. In Tokyo and Kyoto, we walked half-marathons each day, stopping for fuel in any restaurant that had a line of people waiting outside, and were never disappointed.

The perks of getting on a plane as a 30-something with lots of cash to burn are simple: food, nightlife, cocktails, museums, grueling hikes, and mindblowing temples like Tikal in Guatemala.

But the biggest high? Personal agency. Knowing it was up to me to figure things out and create my own experience. 

Not Enough

All my life, I’ve carried this inner weight of ‘not enough-ness.’ I’m not strong enough, smart enough, or not making enough money as the next person. It’s dumb, it's not helpful, but it’s there.

To put it another way…

If life is a game, I know what the goals are, I just feel like I don’t know how to put points on the board. Instead of the logical flow of doing Step A to Step B to arrive at Goal C, I’m usually bouncing around the room and crashing into walls, magically arriving at a version of my destination. 

In my working career, I worked at agencies simply because they threw money and a desk at me, even though it was out of my wheelhouse and off my values to sell sports and fizzy sugar water. 

Then I went freelance and bobbed around some more, working for hot shops to indie spots. It’s the same thing with my writing process: I’ve written an entire book on addiction, shelved it, and switched to this essay format. 

I’m not complaining - I’m fully aware that life is not a linear path, and detours are a necessary part of the game. I just wish that I felt like I had more control over these decisions.

Traveling is where I feel the most empowered. I feel alive when Lisa and I drive to a random city in Tuscany with no map or plan of any kind. It’s usually a sign to start wandering and walk down that pretty alleyway. 

I feel alive when we’re out at night in Colombia, and overhear strangers talking up a random city we need to see. And then the next day, we just fucking go. And have the greatest time. Those surprise detours, where we put ourselves out there and followed our uninformed gut, are what led to memories in Minca, a small town far from the capital of Cartagena. We hopped on the back of motorcycles, toured a coffee farm, ate sandwiches made by Frenchmen, and rode back in a sedan taxi packed with a family of seven.

Traveling forces self-reliance. When all hell breaks loose and you miss your only shuttle back to town and no one speaks a word of English, you get creative. You draw pictures and doodle smiley faces. You laugh with locals and find common ground. These are not disasters - they’re miracles.

I miss that feeling. I miss feeling out of place, because that’s when I feel most at home. 

So I’m trying to not let my curiosity die a quick death. But it’s harder at 40 to find things that are truly exciting and new. 

But today I hopped on the bike and discovered a new cafe and pizzeria close to me. The decor of the coffee shop felt straight out of Japan, in a minimalist and austere way. The pizza place sits next to this Portuguese wine bar, with outdoor seating that screams “Welcome to Europe!” 

All these shops popped up recently in nearby Cypress Park, a city with a mixture of Latino/Filipino/White hipsters who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else and are trying to make it work.

I sat there with my coffee and bike and felt happy. I’ll spare you the latte art, but it was 10/10 beans. Other people were talking about music and books. A lady had a cute dog. 

It ain’t Tokyo but it doesn’t have to be. It’s its own little world. I appreciate them being here, and feel grateful I randomly ended up there. 

It’s so easy to let our sense of wonder decay. We get jobs and phones and children and life gets in the way. But it’s a muscle – you must train it and practice it, if you want to develop it further.

In the spirit of accountability, I’m committing to finding the new, and venturing further out of my usual stomping grounds. Who’s with me? Let’s do something new every day.

With love and pizza, Aaron

Four Things Right Now

1. The Sterile World of Infinite Choice - An essay on how everything in today’s age is generic, soulless, and kind of sucks.

2. Ezra Klein Show - Middle East Peace Process Primer - A top US negotiator dispels myths and confirms some. When people say “The Arabs refused every deal,” they’re not entirely wrong. He ends with a deeply pessimistic outlook on the current state of affairs and prospect for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. 

3. Bread Shaping Tutorial - I’m mixing and baking sourdough loaves again. I have a lot to learn. Watching a woman shape bread while talking to camera is relaxing. 

4. Holly Whitaker’s Mantra Project - A brain reset email course that filled my brain with positive happy bubbles every day. I really credit this with helping me stay the course. If you want to know more, hit me up.