Missing Home

At this moment by all accounts I should be covered in dust, and killing time before a flight by sleeping in a Walmart parking lot.  But like a lot of things in 2020 that just wasn't in the cards.  I've only experienced it twice, but I know people who have been going to Burning Man for well over a decade.  So if I have a sense of loss this year I can only imagine how others might feel.

If I'm being honest with myself I first went because secretly I was hoping that it would push me to a place that would fix a lot of my problems.  But I came back realizing the purpose of the event is not to fix all of your shit.  You see no one adventure, or eye opening experience can provide a silver bullet for sorting through all your baggage.  You could travel the world trying to expand your horizons as much as possible, but you're still that same broken (albeit mostly functioning) individual back at home if you're not putting the work in on slowly improving yourself. 

I'll freely admit that by the middle of the week I had a complete mental breakdown.  It happens out there a lot more often than you'd think.  I've done enough dangerous mentally and physically taxing things over the years (you can find those meltdowns here, here, and here) so my mantra for dealing with such occasions is "You did this to yourself."  In other words I am in control of my own destiny.  No one forced me to do this.  At some point I thought this was a good idea, and you come out the other side of it stronger.

But that year I came back lesser.  I was more depressed having been part of something extraordinary, but needing to return to what was now a muted, and drab "real world" that seemingly had all the color drained of it.  

At this point it wasn't a matter of if I'd go back so much as when.  I'm not great at managing my vacation time, and had my first trip to Europe with friends lined up around the same time as Burning Man last year.  But I made it work.  I had to go back to convince myself that this wasn't just a weird bucket list thing, and that it was in my blood now.  This I confirmed.

2020 hasn't been kind to anyone, and I am no exception.  I'm struggling just like everyone else.  But still the moment the tickets went on sale I was first in line.  A few months later they pulled the plug, and offered up refunds.  It's fitting that the theme this year was the "Multiverse".  From that concept numerous online/VR Burning Man experiences sprung up.  Many people made their own little pocket Black Rock City universe in their backyards.  Even so far as building their own Man.

I live in too urban an environment to safely burn him anywhere so he'll just have to wait for now.

This is my good friend Gravity's Man.  I designed the structure for him not realizing he wanted to make the damn thing 25 feet tall, and prayed my estimates scaled well.  It didn't crush anybody so that's a win in the books.  Safety 3rd.

I tried to participate in some of the online adventures, but it only made me sadder for not being out there with my friends in the middle of nowhere.

All in all I think even the most jaded individual right now is looking at 2021 with the utmost "glass half full" energy.  We're all yearning for some semblance of normalcy.  We all want to get back to boring.  It's going to be a year where even the most mundane of grinds would be greatly appreciated.  Where the simplest of things like sitting down to eat with friends or family, grabbing a beer with coworkers, or seeing your kids off to school will be excitingly banal.  All the dumb little things.

So even now as I'm yearning for the bizarre, the dust and the dirt.  The uncomfortableness, and the rapture.  If next year together we can achieve the boring it's going to make anything and everything you've had to forfeit this year seem that much more colorful and brighter.

Here's to a mundane 2021, and an even more exotic burn.

Welcome Home.