Restlessness in the Age of Pandemic
Throughout my 20’s, I found myself drawn to stories of world travelers, adventurers that were seeking out the far ends of the earth, finding them, and then turning back around and heading right back to the start.
For a lot of years of my life, I found myself eternally restless. Perhaps it was what I’m sure was undiagnosed ADHD as a child, but most of my childhood I was never able to sit still for very long. Movement felt natural and good. Silence and stillness felt so uncomfortable. I’ve never been an extreme athlete, or hell, even a regular athlete for that matter, or a warrior, or a thrill seeker, or a physical based strength person. But still, I find myself daily needing a certain amount of stimuli, mostly on a physical level, to really feel at ease.
I’ve questioned a lot why this is. For years I didn’t really understand it. As I’ve grown older, I’ve been able to control the constant bouncing leg, or leaning back in my chair, or just any other means of stimulation I would find myself doing frequently to feel at ease. The nervous tics are gone. But while I can control this urge better, there remains in me a yearning to constantly see new places, people, and things.
We currently exist in the era of COVID-19 and frankly, I don’t know when we’ll be able to travel again. A few months before this began, my family and I just moved cross country from LA to Cincinnati, OH. I can’t tell you how excited I was to explore a new city, learn every street and nook and cranny and new thing I never laid eyes on before.
These days I find myself driving. A lot. I know it’s not ideal and I don’t want to suggest other people should do it. But with our kids, my son needs a nap daily and oftentimes the car is the most peaceful place to get some sleep. So I load up the kids and take them for a drive. I’m in a new city and I’ve learned to explore each neighborhood, even though I can’t get out and walk around in it. I just drive and think about what it looks like in more normal times. It’s my daily mental scrub to reset and ease my brain.
My daughter and I have a game going. We’re finding playgrounds in the city that we’ve never seen before. They’re all roped off with caution tape. We look at them and she thinks about what it would be like to play on them. I never imagined a scenario where we’d have to do this exercise, but now it’s a highlight of some of our days.
Other days we do something where she tells me what direction to go at stop signs. Left or right. We let the journey unfold from there. My dad used to take me onto back country roads growing up and ask me how we would get back home. It was and is one of my fondest memories.
Some days during quarantine, I think I’ve been training for this my whole life. Like, I’ve thought through some of these scenarios before. But the emotions go back and forth. I realize what I miss the most — more than shopping, or bars, or movies, or socializing, or working, or really anything else — I miss travel. I miss seeing things I have not seen before. And I miss nature. I know in some places(including where I live), parks are still open. But frankly I don’t feel okay taking the kids out of the car. They’re too young and don’t understand all of this and the risk is not worth it to me to take a hike or walk along a river path. So I sit in the car some days and just drive there and look.
When this is all said and done, I want to drive, outside of the city, to a new destination. And go explore. Explore again without having to consider my safety or that of my loved ones. I think ultimately I was always meant to be an explorer. At this point I’ve lived in at least 6 different cities for a length of time and am constantly wanting to find new terrain. This whole experience has made me question when and if that will ever happen again. I’m hopeful, but if this has taught me anything — you never know. Never would have dreamed this moment in time would exist, but it has made me realize I should have never taken the opportunity to travel or at least create enough movement to ease my restless mind for granted.
To all the restless souls like myself out there — cheers to whenever we all get to scratch the itch again.