Tom Dyson is one of the most interesting men I'm aware of. The guy just spent a year-and-a-half traveling the world with his family (wife and three kids), living out of a suitcase, spending nights in cheap hostels in strange towns in foreign countries all across the world. I'm not really sure how I originally came across these emails, but I picked up on his travels toward the end, last fall sometime. They were taking a train westward through China, from town to town, and really city to city. About a month ago their travels finally hit an end (they spent about a month visiting relatives in Canada and England), and only about a week or so ago returned to the US to plot out a new life as they re-enter society (somewhat).
Prior to reading about this man's adventures, the previously most adventurous person I knew was my friend Kevin from college. As far as I know, he didn't put all his money and resources into gold like Dyson has, but he has biked across the United States and Europe, and over the last year when we've checked in, he's been sharing about new and fresh dreams to travel and explore, while also making it work with his work life.
What jumped out to me the most about Dyson, though, was his story. Like most Westerners, he was struggling big-time from anxiety and depression, largely as a result of his dependency on technology. A myriad of personal issues and challenges in his life also didn't help matters. His way out was to "go off the grid." Following along with his travels and the daily adventures, it's clear that this is what cleared Dyson's mind, not only as a form of detoxification, but also as an opportunity to give him a chance to cogitate on how to do life differently from here on out. I admire his guts on all sorts of levels. And as a disclosure, I actually relate to a lot of the struggles Dyson has periodically mentioned. While I cannot compare our situations, I see a lot of common threads, not only in our struggles but also in our personalities. Seeing him overcome many of these things holding him back gives me hope, even if the measures he took in my opinion were drastic.
Last year, I posted about my Meyers-Briggs personality test results revealing me as an Adventurer. I believe it; regrettably, I don't travel much. In fact, I rarely travel. While I don't consciously think day to day about how much I want to go explore, I do think deep down inside I yearn to. It mostly comes up when I hit a proverbial fault line or potential proverbial fault line in life that tells me it's time to move from one season or era to the next. Really, over the last year, I've been feeling that a lot more than I have in quite a while. Primarily, I've been looking to change jobs as a way of getting myself out of the financial gulag that I've been in over the last few years. But, because I don't get paid to take a vacation, I choose not to take time off work so as to earn as much as I can, so as not to sink further into the pit.
One of my hopes I would get to do, either before I change jobs, or not long after I change jobs, is to take a week or two and get outta Dodge. Go see something completely different. Go do something completely different. (Go visit people I haven't seen in a while...) I don't foresee myself doing what Dyson did -- or even some of the things my friend Kevin does, as much as I admire him and his guts, also -- but I have been looking up train trips to California. (Who would've thought it takes longer to get to or from San Francisco by Amtrak than it does Los Angeles?)
By the way, if any of my California-dwelling friends are reading this, I don't have any concrete plans yet to visit. (Sorry!) I'm still at the conceptual/dreaming stage. But I am dreaming of a reset button as I pray and strive to clear out the gunk that I've somehow accumulated over the last few years and move toward another new clean slate. The possibilities are endless, proverbially.
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