Reboot

Ages back, someone I know who had just returned from a retreat asked me if I’d ever considered going on such a thing. My life was good at the time, I was not yet deep in the meat grinder of middle age. I responded that there was nothing I wanted to get away from.

I was constantly traveling, my horizons were always changing, and I didn’t have a regular day job. I was still very much in love with my now ex-husband, still enjoying the open space we had between us when he was back in his home country, not yet bored of being alone during the day in his small town when I was there with him.

Retreat and escape seemed synonymous to me. The person who asked me about this had a plate full of difficult circumstances and was a generation older than me. For them, the value of time free from worry, the basics of meals and shelter managed comfortably, time to think your own damn thoughts, was doubtless invaluable. I did not understand how midlife could make you feel stretched so thin, even on a good day.

I also did not understand how shutting off the noise of daily life could free up your brain to do other things. So many frustrated interior designers and crafters and bakers and poets were released during the darkest part of Covid. I’m not saying there were no new complications, but the care and feeding of a sourdough starter is for people who have time to focus on small magic. I suspect lockdown lowered the stakes on our side projects. We retreated into our homes and what else were we supposed to do while we were there? We made bread and bad watercolors and cleaned our closets and fought against despair.

I suffer from seasonally affected depression. No amount of lap swimming or sitting in front of the happy light or judicious applications of coffee and chocolate helps. I could do drugs but what really helps is walking Harley the Dog in bright sunshine a few days a week. Even if the weather is not gray, the short days grind me down and I struggle not to go to bed at sunset. This darkness — both literal and existential — is the thing I need to get away from.

Last year, I went to the California desert; I spent a month just outside Joshua Tree National Park. I felt like I’d won the lottery. The warm, dry days, the clear skies… I frequently ate my lunch at the picnic table in the backyard. Harley would hurl himself down on the sun-warmed concrete back steps and sigh in such content. I returned to Seattle feeling ready to ride out what was left of winter.

In the darkest part of this winter, I decamped to Moab, Utah. The town sits in a wide red-rock valley. Behind my rented house, there was a river wash of pink sand and cottonwood trees. To the east, a rise of red rock canyon, and behind that, the snow-capped peaks of the La Sal Mountains. To the west, another wall of red rock. When I arrived it was bitterly cold but over the course of my stay, it warmed up. Even in the cold, even on the days when it snowed, though, there was more sun than in the green-gray city I call home.

I ran away from the Pacific Northwest winter intending to write and I finished my first draft. I walked Harley in the river wash behind my rental, I walked myself in the national parks (Arches and Canyonlands were both very close, gallery here). I cooked, I swam laps in the community pool, I read speculative fiction that took place in imaginary worlds.

I understand the staggering luxury of this. I do not have kids and my parents are gone. I am single. But I had some bad years, many in a row, and luxury or no, it also felt necessary. The winter I spent in Joshua Tree charged my battery for the year ahead, but after the time in Moab I feel completely rebooted.

In October, 2023, I quit the day job I’d taken as a safe harbor to weather the darkest COVID years and to patch the financial bleeding of my divorce. Today, as we peer into March, I have completely rebuilt my freelance portfolio. It’s exactly where I want it to be. I have one steady copywriting gig, one small web project, and I just signed the first phase of a tech project.

It’s a lot, but because I’m freelance, I don’t have to spend half my time doing meetings and office politics. I still have time to edit and pitch my book. I still have time to swim laps and walk my dog and cultivate screenplay ideas. There’s a circular quality for sure; in many ways I’m back to the life I had before the lights dimmed. But there’s a new brightness, too. My operating system is fully updated. My hard drive is defragged. all those tracking cookies deleted, and various other geeky metaphors. Sometimes I remember to wash my glasses, and I’m like, “Oh, man, that’s better!” It’s like that, but it’s my brain.

I’m a minute from being a senior citizen. Okay, it’s five years to 65, but the last five were a messy blur and felt about a minute long so indulge me. My circumstances are different than I’d imagine, but also better, finally, after tossing the ring of middle age into the fires of Mount Doom. Everything sucked and now things suck markedly less, and some days things are downright exactly like I think they should be. I got back home to Seattle just in time to see the crocuses appear. They are tiny bright suns, fresh and yellow, lighting the way toward spring.