I’m never satisfied. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing, I admit, I’m rarely content. I’m not always conscious that I’m not content. Lately I’m just taking life as it comes, but sometimes I wake up and realize things in the world, and in my life, could be better.
I can’t do anything about the world’s problems, and my only choices to improve my own life are (a) change my attitude or (b) change my situation. I’m ruled by fear, I know. I fall repeately into the wreckage of the future.
Speaking of future wrecking, this week, I signed a lease on a studio apartment in a low-income senior housing . . . what do you call it? A facility? A complex? It’s not a nursing home, I don’t think. It’s not big enough to be called a complex, whatever that is.
I’ve seen the apartments from the outside, but I haven’t actually seen the apartment I’m renting. That’s nuts, right? At this point, I don’t care. As long as it has hot water, heat, and no cockroaches, I’m good. Mainly, I’m looking forward to making my family happy.
So what did I do? I paid my rent, deposit, and the electricity deposit, and immediately left town.
Actually I had a preplanned gig to babysit the little dog Maddie. I left Portland on Wednesday, stopped in Coos Bay to sign the lease and hand over a large amount of money, and then I hit the road, heading south toward the desert.
Did you know that California hates travelers? I’d forgotten. California has arranged the rest areas along I-5 to be (a) stuck in endless renovation, (b) limited to an eight-hour stay, or (c) barred to overnight parking. I experienced this lack of courtesy on the drive north, which is why I ended up driving from the Cracker Barrel in Bakersfield all the way to the Welcome Center in Ashland, Oregon.
This time, I made the trip in reverse. From Medford, I drove south on I-5, assuming I would come to a rest area that would put me up for the night. Closed, time limit, no overnight parking, yada yada. So I kept going south, heading toward the only place I knew I could park without a hassle. Yep. Cracker Barrel in Bakersfield.
On the bright side, literally: the Beaver Moon. On the downside, I can’t see well at night. Plus, I wasn’t familiar with the road from I-5 to Bakersfield. Lots of irate drivers stacked up behind me. I’m always the pilot car. I put a handmade sticker on my back window: Go around me. It’s probably only readable when the semi behind me is about to crawl up my tail pipe.
Remind me never to eat at Cracker Barrel again. What was I thinking? In my defense, I know I ate there once before, and I forgot that I had vowed not to repeat the horrors. Second worst coffee ever. I forget where I had the worst coffee. I won’t remember until I go there again.
So now I’m sitting in my car, which is parked in the desert outside of Quartzsite, where everyone around me is doing the same thing, a hundred yards away in all directions, spread out like galaxies in the expanding universe. The breeze is light, the sun is shining, the sky is brilliant blue, and the temperature is heading up, up, up. Perfect. I’d stay here forever if it weren’t so dang hot in the summer. And if I had proper housing with air conditioning.
But my life is about to change. Soon I will be housed, at least for the next year. My savings will drain away slowly, as they have since I left Portland in 2021. This trajectory can only go one way, unless I win the lottery, which is unlikely.
I’m going to take contrary action and refuse to succumb to my chronically malcontented self. Out here, with the dome of blue sky overhead, I almost feel content. Soon I will be loading my stuff out of the storage unit and into my car to make the two-hour drive to my new town. I hope the apartment will not be too dark or depressing. I hope the people are nice, and more important, quiet. I hope I can find some cheap used furniture (the kind that doesn’t come with bedbugs). Mainly, I hope I have enough savings to last the year.
If it all goes sideways . . . and if I my car still works, and if I can still drive, I can always come back to the desert.