"Why Georgia?" in Washington and Oregon

My pensive commute and making sense of the drive

This morning, I dropped my oldest off for his Period 0 Driver’s Ed class and threw on a random song from my suggestions.

“Why Georgia?” John Mayer

Like many elder millennials, we were introduced to this sensitive heartthrob in college as our lives were truly starting.

In 2001, I attended Georgia Southern University and came to know the interstates well. I traveled up and down I-95 from the Savannah area. Interstate 16 led me to college. I went home with my Atlanta friends as we dreaded the city’s traffic on shopping trips and to raves via I-75, I-85, and I-285.

(I haven’t been back to Georgia or the East Coast since we moved to the PNW in November 2017. I’m not ready.)

A lot of John’s music, especially from Room for Squares, probably made us overthink the crossroads of life.

Taking into consideration my life in the over twenty years since Mr. Mayer came onto the scene, the song makes more sense.

'Cause I wonder sometimes

About the outcome

Of a still verdictless life

This December is weighty for me because I’m pulling a vulnerable piece from consideration to post on my Substack and closing my literary journal journey. I’m also preparing to apply for a fellowship that I hope will fine-tune the trajectory of my writing.

This morning as John wailed about a “quarter life crisis” (How cute were we?), I absorbed the view on my beautiful and sometimes dangerous commute from my home in Washington to my job in Oregon along the foothills of the snow-capped Blue Mountains. (My husband actually just texted me: How was the drive? Apparently, there were a few accidents I was oblivious to because I was bopping along to John.)

While people are stressing about the holidays, I’m vomiting my life on the page to make sense of it all. Call it validation, a way to pay off my grad school student debt, a hunger for community, a celebration of my sensuality, or proving to my twelve-year-old painfully shy self that there’s a destiny being birthed as she’s finding herself in creative writing class.

So what, so I've got a smile on

But it's hiding the quiet superstitions in my head

Don't believe me

Don't believe me

When I say I've got it down

And that’s what my journey and writing have boiled down to, the dissection of figuring out whether I made the right choices or the crappy ones. In some cases, I can’t even define that yet.

But in that uncertainty, I’ve given in to authenticity. That’s probably why I don’t like to sit on my pieces too long. I add too many superfluous words that make the trek more whimsical when it should just reveal the genuine drive towards my destination.

Occasionally, it will be icy. Sometimes with slow traffic. Oftentimes, it’s a uneventful commute (or piece). In any case, I’m on my own behind the wheel or the screen.

Everybody is just a stranger but

That's the danger in going my own way

I guess it's the price I have to pay

Still "everything happens for a reason"

Is no reason not to ask myself if I

Am living it right?

Questions, analysis, observations, “guinea-pigging” myself out there. Still grasping for what has always been elusive or off-limits. Am I being understood? Am I making sense?! (Please, please, please... I have to make sense.)

I’m attempting to understand the beauty in not having it figured out, not knowing what’s around the turn. I know where I’m going, firm in my destinations and open to pit stops.

Next year, I’m striving to appreciate the drives, the stretches where I mull over and pensively ponder. Being okay with detours. Looking at the same scenery in vivid, new ways.