I am back on the road.
After four weeks of being stuck in the same town, it feels good to be logging miles on the road again. I’ve been traveling up the west coast of Florida, enjoying small towns and rural areas that make van life so enjoyable for me.
At the same time, business is picking up. Things always slow down at the end of the year, but even four years after starting my business I am still surprised by how long it takes to pick back up again in the new year. But now in February, my inbox is alive once more and my client roster for Q1 and Q2 is rapidly filling up. After taking so much time away from my business last year, it feels good to be busy again.
I spent so much time trying to regain momentum, I forgot how quickly it can pick up speed. And business can pick up alarming quick sometimes. It can be hard to swing from one side of the pendulum so quickly, from having plenty of space to take on new projects to fighting overwhelm at the size of my to-do list. Entrepreneurship, like van life, forces you to ride the waves. It’s not what happens, it’s how you respond to it.
I’ve mused before on the elusiveness of finding focus in the van. Perhaps it is my neurodivergent brain, but there is a type of focus, the deep work state, that simply eludes me within the confines of my vehicle. I spend so much time in such little space there is no one spot that I can use as my “work zone.” I rely heavily on libraries on the road to help me get into that deep-focus space and get things done.
Walking into a new space, having a desk or a cubby and outlets with unlimited power readily available creates an environment that gets my brain over the hump of “starting.” Task resistance is a common neurodivergent challenge, but I didn’t anticipate how much being a van would affect me. Thank god for libraries. (You can also tell a lot about the health of a community by it’s libraries, but that is a piece for another day.)
As I travel, I am struck by how much is the same from town to town and state to state. You can reliably find libraries, public parks, Walmarts, and Cracker Barrels nearly everywhere – and those are the foundation of my van life. I am curious if and how this will change as I head deeper into the rural South – Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
I am from the North, born and raised seven hours north of the Mason-Dixon line, a classic division in American culture. I grew up hearing strong opinions on the South. If you’re American, you’ve heard them too. But to write an entire region off to stereotypes does it – and us – a massive disservice. These states are poor yes, diverse yes, and often mischaracterized. They hold some of the most important pieces of American history. They are also ecologically diverse and heavily undeveloped, a true glimpse into the heart of America. There are places of otherwordly beauty, like Weeki Wachee Springs (photos of my visit below), and pockets of devastating poverty.
My time in the South growing up was limited and confined heavily to Orlando, Florida. As an adult, I have begun to examine my own beliefs about the region through literature. I read Jesamyn Ward’s Sing Unburied Sing in 2020 during my 100-book reading challenge, and it has stuck with me ever since. Recently I finished Imani Perry’s South to America, a deep dive into American culture and conceptions in the South through the author’s personal and professional lens. To my delight, I recognized several of the towns she named in Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and Florida as places I had visited already.
Delight is perhaps too lighthearted of a word for the subject matters that Perry dives into, but there is a context that only visiting a place can give. She describes her time wandering through Harper’s Ferry, naming the parking lot I parked in, the candy store I visited, the views I saw. Mine is a heliocentric view on a book that is far larger than a singular person, but so often “the South” can feel like a foreign land to a northerner. I am easily clocked as “not from here” before I open my mouth, and most conversations lead sooner or later to where I am from. The cadence of my walk, the accent in my speech, and even my eye contact can be identified as “other” in my own country. As I pick up the pace of my travels, I am eager to visit new states and places. And yet perhaps even my enthusiasm marks me as other as I travel through these places.
I am also aware as I move through the South of the privilege I have in never wondering if I have found a safe place to spend the night. It has never occurred to me that I may be an unwelcome visitor, an outsider because of my skin color. Sundown towns, historical or present, are no concern to me (logistically, not ethically.)
Occasionally people will ask me what the purpose of this trip was, why I started pursuing this, and if it was related to my career path. The career path has supported the van goal, and the goal of the van trip has always been to explore my country, to see what it is to live in America, to understand the people who are my countrymen (countrypersons?). I am here because I am here. I cannot untangle what it means to be an American from my identity any more than I can untangle womanhood.
My visit to Weeki Wachee Springs last weekend reminded me that there is still so much to see and explore in my travels. My business changes are a reminder to be patient and trust that everything unfolds in its own time. And this weekend is time for me to get outside, back into nature, and remember everything I’m grateful for.
