Fun and games, right? Retirement, vanlife, exploring, adventure — it’s all fun and games…until it is not.
Last week, while we were in the glorious Teton National Park, I was a bit under the weather. For 48-ish hours I was achy all over, I was feverish, my stomach was a bit upset, and I had a persistent headache. While I am always amazed at Tylenol’s magic effect on me, as soon as it wore off, I felt poorly again. As it turns out, I was able to do some hiking in between Tylenol doses, albeit more slowly than usual. A couple of days later, the aches and elevated temperature were gone but then my nose became stuffy. Weird. What got really weird however was that for two nights, with that stuffy nose, I experienced–for the first time ever–a sense of not being able to catch my breath to take a full, slow deep breath in. I kept having to sit up in bed, in the dark, so that every third or fourth attempt at taking a deep breath finally succeeded. I felt … an unfamiliar anxious feeling that I had never experienced previously. After that first night, while we hiked, the same sensation occurred, in that I could not take a full deep breath in. Again, it created a sense of anxiety that was so weird. That night was even more difficult in terms of breathing so that my night’s sleep was quite awful and limited.
Then yesterday, on our last morning in the Tetons, I read the news. Since the November election and since this current administration has been in power, I have intentionally filtered my news intake, reading in limited amounts while saving myself for late night comedy hosts to fill me in on the horrors being perpetuated onto the peoples of this country–the news wrapped in comedy provides an emotional buffer, at least for me. Perhaps because I had slept so poorly or maybe it was still the slightly anxious breathlessness I had felt, but yesterday’s news just brought me to my knees. The Smithsonian being called out for highlighting “how bad slavery was”, the round up of unhoused persons in DC, the military and police presence in certain cities, people being taken off the streets after being chased down, the fiasco of the meeting with Putin followed by the utter lack of finesse when meeting with European leaders … all of it just crushed me.
I have felt this way before. The remedy has been to go outside into my yard to immerse myself in my native garden, to listen to the birds singing, or to journal while acknowledging the gratitude I feel for the abundance of goodness in my life. Mostly, this has worked for me in the past. Yet, here I was, in some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, feeling emotionally devastated. By current events. By a person in command over whom I have no influence and over whom it seems that most of the elected officials in our country have no influence over either.
I allowed myself to wallow for a bit, feeling just awful. Then, I realized that what I can influence is me. My own intake of news. Immediately, I gave myself permission to delete all of the news apps and newsletters that come into my inbox every day. Part of my having felt so hopeless and helpless is that I am far away from home, unable to rally with my friends to protest, unable to call my elected officials, unable to be part of the solution. When I acknowledged that, I understood that for this time in my life — our chosen retirement on the road — I can surrender to NOT doing anything as a form of active protest, I can accept that my heart lies in the right place and that I have been engaged in plenty of activism in the past and will likely resume in the future. There is nothing to be gained from reading the hideous and unfathomable news every day if I cannot respond to it in a meaningful manner.
I slept well last night, having found an old bag of cough drops with eucalyptus that opened up my sinuses, making breathing easier. This morning, I did not read any news at all, nor will I going forward. It is not that I am ignoring the horrors occurring in our county, nor am I turning my back on those experiencing directly those horrors, but I also embrace that loving myself by caring for my own sensitive heart, and for giving myself permission to immerse myself in the scenery and wildlife of the magnificent landscapes through which we are traveling, is a form of activism. I felt grand on our wondrous hike this morning!
It may not be all fun and games, but this vanlife in our retirement is a glorious time for us. It is meant to be savored. I hesitated to share this post–in fact we went out of our way just to find a wifi signal so I could write–but what I experienced is, for me, a realistic part of our travel. It is ok to be connected and disconnected to life, both.
