#179: Zoning out.

Not all escapes are created equal.

My Uber driver’s monologue began the moment the back hatch of her Volvo lifted. For 26 minutes, she shared her ride-share maximization strategies (always chose passengers with the longest rides), her conspiracy theories (cloud seeding and chemtrails over Louisiana are killing us), and the two times she’d been reported for dangerous driving (those passengers just wanted their money back). By the time we reached Louis Armstrong International Airport, I was firmly on the passengers’ side.

I checked my bag and descended into the airport’s belly. The 6am, post-Jazz-Fest TSA line greeted me at the bottom of the stairs.

I took it personally.

Ten days in someone else’s beautiful-but-not-mine home had drained my battery. Add to that a broken writing rhythm and the stress of my last Do Loss book event; a creeping Scrooge feeling had bubbled up. Not even walks with Olive around Audubon Park on beautiful May days had been able to shake it. My brain wanted to be elsewhere. Now.

The book event at Octavia Books in NOLA was still great!

Which, in my book, is no harm, no foul.

We all get worn out, stressed out, bored out of our minds sometimes. We all deserve to cope dirty when we need to, aka do whatever works to get us through the rough patches. When that craving bubbles up, I’ll melt into the couch in front of Star Wars movies for hours. But I didn’t think a slightly unhinged Uber driver and a disrupted writing routine reached that threshold. Yet I could still feel myself craving the emotional equivalent of airplane mode: zoning out.

Once I cleared the TSA line and boarded, I tucked my WSJ and current novel into the seat back pocket. I never buy the wifi on a plane — an old habit from my corporate days, when 32,000 feet was the only work-free zone on earth. Devices inert. World on mute.

I noticed I still craved my usual escapes: checking the kids’ locations, reading news articles online, scrolling. I just couldn’t have them. I wasn’t feeling all that hard copy content in my seat-back stash either, so I settled on staring into space. As my mind meandered, a six-week-old conversation popped into my head.

My pal Deb — devoted Buddhist, small-animal vet in the Vail Valley — and I were debriefing after my very first book talk in Colorado, when she gave me a new perspective on my beloved coping dirty: maybe when we reach for simple pleasures, what we’re looking for isn’t distraction at all. Maybe it’s connection.

Because not all escapes are created equal. Some leave me feeling worse than before I picked up my phone, or reached into the fridge, or retail-therapied my day away, or watched Dave Chapelle’s latest Netflix special.

But some leave me feeling strangely more myself.

There’s a guy on Instagram called Ben the Bookseller. He films himself in his bookshop recommending books, talking smack about book covers, and revealing unknown gems with this completely unhinged enthusiasm, silly mannerisms and unique British style. His hair stands straight up, barely contained. I watch him and I laugh. I copy down his recommendations — Oh, I have Swimming Studies on my TBR pile, I’ll pull it out as Ben just gave it a glowing review! After one-way communing with Ben, I feel genuinely good. I don’t feel distracted. I feel re-connected with parts of myself that I cherish and enjoy: the book nerd, the endless learner, the anglophile with dry humor.

But then there are those other times — you know the ones — when you get sucked into whatever the algorithm decides you need, and forty minutes later you surface feeling vaguely gross, like you just ate an entire sleeve of Oreos and can’t remember doing it.

Same phone. Same app. Completely different experience.

Deb’s reframe changed the question I now ask myself. Not do I need a break? (The answer is almost always yes.) But what am I actually hungry for?

Sometimes it’s a laugh. Sometimes it’s an idea. Sometimes it’s a person who reminds you that the world contains people worth knowing.

So on the plane that day, I ended up mostly staring out the window. The clouds and landscapes below grazed by, and I just let my thoughts do the same thing. The irritation eventually thinned and gave way to peace which gave way to curiosity. To openness. To looking outward once again, at the elderly gentleman next to me with his Vietnam Veteran ball cap, to the flight attendant’s boxy red glasses, to the business man sound asleep on the aisle.

An hour later, I felt like I had landed back in a core part of my being: the Noticer who is endlessly content watching the world eddy and swirl, and slowly unspooling its mysteries.

To finding what brings you home,

P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here: