Member-only story
LIFE
Plugging Out
I did that cliché thing where I told myself I was going to change.
There’s nothing easy about waking up early in the mountains to go trout fishing. But I chose to do this, so I have to carry through with it. I took my Border Collie/Australian Shepherd dog with me, but he seems just as wary as I do with the open sky and timeless day. I get up, turn on the coffee maker to make my Awake tea. The room is cold. I start a fire in the stove in the corner. I decide not to take a shower. I look at the fishing rods by the door and imagine them as stick insects guarding an imperial palace. It’s not yet six a.m.
I was driving home from work the week before and stuck in traffic from a wreck in front of me. As I got closer to it, I saw someone had died. My first thought was that could’ve been me, the dead person, not the one causing the death.
Or maybe I am the one causing the death. I’m doing it to myself by routine. Wake up, drive to work, work, drive home, eat, drink, sleep, repeat. Even the weekends are routine. My whole life a schedule I’ve set for myself.
As I drove away from the accident, I did that cliché thing where I told myself I was going to change. You see it in the movies all the time. Thousands of books are published every year about disconnecting from life to…
