Escape Artist

“

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then … the glory … a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories.”

–John Steinbeck

In 2005, Andrea Enright was living a golden, idyllic freelancer’s lifestyle, her communications portfolio fattening ever with contracts from well-known clients that ranged from Boston Market to Planned Parenthood. She had already successfully escaped the proverbial grind … but something was still missing. Her husband, Michael Boudreaux, a tech maestro for DIRECTV, thought so too. After a bit of soul-searching, they blew out of Denver and joined the Peace Corps.

When their two years of service in Bulgaria came to a close, Andrea and Michael kept going. On a mission they call “Wanderlust or Bust” they continued across the globe, including Syria, Lebanon, and Kurdistan (yeah, that’s Northern Iraq), couchsurfing, blogging, videoing and volunteering as they went.

So where are you now and why?
Right now, we’re along the Red Sea in Dahab, Egypt, living in a shared flat above an Internet café ($10/day for a room and unlimited Internet). I’m rewriting a nearby hotel’s website in exchange for big discounts on food. This is a Shangri-la we though we’d never find. While we’ve been traveling this is more like vacation. Western food. Fast Internet. Sun with breeze. Cheap living. Lapping waves. Yet, we’re finding, even the beach is only pleasing for so long.

What’s the basic impetus behind the Wanderlust or Bust tour?
We wanted to see the world through our own eyes instead of a journalist’s. A main pillar of a well-explored life is grappling with what it is to be human–what our purpose is in this life. The news is a poor representation of human nature, and tends to paint our own as exceptional. But to understand the similarities and differences, you must see if for yourself. And as you explore the souls of others, you end up exploring your own. For us, to “know thyself” is very important.

In addition, travel awakens our senses–and this feels both raw and real. The colors are more vibrant and the grays are more depressing. Travel encourages us to practice “Right Attention”, a part of the Buddhist Eightfold Path which says to be consciously mindful of the way our foot feels in our shoe or how orange pulp tastes on our tongue.

Did you take any odd jobs along the way?
We have. In Fethyie, Turkey, we picked olives, weeded a citrus orchard and helped run a 19th century farmhouse of volunteers and guests for two weeks as part of WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms. (WWOOF). In exchange, we received free room and board and enough enlightenment to last us for years.

In Beirut, over six weeks, we built a new website for Inma Foundation, a Beirut-based NGO which supports the disadvantaged communities of Lebanon, primarily Palestinian refugees. They provided us with a flat, a small stipend and an irreplaceable experience in return.

In Israel, we stayed with a family of five in a small farming community or “moshav” which grew from the Zionist movement in the early 20th century. For a week, we pruned fruit trees, cooked meals, planted spices and helped with their organic store. They provided us with free room and board.

While I travel, I also work in other ways. I provide the Sofia Destination Guide and feature articles for the in-flight magazine of easyJet, a low-cost airline. In addition, for Austria-based Infowerk, (wherever I can find a studio,) I record voice narration for helicopter e-learning modules which are used in European military training units.

Do you feel like that glory that Steinbeck wrote about is something you’re chasing, or do you feel it drives and inspires you?
Both. In the spirit of the Buddhist Eightfold Path, which states that “suffering stems not from what happens to you but how you react to what happens to you” a glory is less about the actual experience, but your reaction to that experience. There are two kinds of glories:

First, the Glory comes when we imagine possibilities and then overcome obstacles to convert those possibilities to reality. For example, when we theorized based on research that Kurdish Iraq was safe enough to navigate, we had to overcome the deafening and guttural associations of “Iraq” and “danger”. In this case, it’s the conquering of the illogical fear which we Glory about, more than the specifics of what we saw and experienced upon arrival. Here it drives us forward.

Second, Glory is a temporary trance. It is about deep and deliberate appreciation of our enormous good fortune of being alive in this very moment. This is the stuff Hallmark is made of, but it doesn’t make it any less true. My Glories have been both cheesily predictable and surprisingly strange. Here, it inspires us.

Fence post in my new neighborhood, Petaluma, Calif.

I know, I know … It’s plain rude to abandon a blog for a such long spell. The high-gloss journalistic mafia over at Media Bistro would say so, anyway.

When travel, relocation, the search for new gigs, and other transitions get hairy, I admittedly avoid the blog until I can muster an ounce of insight. Problem is, that’s exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, because the form thrives most when its authors are tangled in crisis. Read the rest of this entry »

The title of the last post reminded me of the financial highlight of my week: an excursion to GO Grocery Outlet .

I’ve had an affinity for this store since 1997, when we used to go there on special outings with the students from the boarding school where I taught. (Why were they special? I dunno, maybe because we always let the kids buy sugary cereal, when we otherwise fed them gruel.)

GO Grocery Outlet might be the type of place that hipsters and aging yuppies would typically drive right past, since it’s almost always housed in a skeezy strip mall abandoned in 1985 along with the Family Dollar. Read the rest of this entry »

Bathhouse ceiling, Hot Springs, AR

Vagabond, writer, and general bad-ass Andrea Enright pounded out a two-sentence blog entry from Egypt yesterday that read:

I cut my own hair today and I’m actually pleased. I’m not sure whether this is a sign of self-sufficiency or frighteningly decreasing standards.

More later on the zeal and drive of this dotcommer-turned-road warrior (whose haircut is, I’m sure, more than competently executed). Her point is one I’ve wanted to riff on ever since my late-March stopover in Hot Springs, Arkansas:

How do you set yourself free without letting yourself go?

Go. As in, over the edge.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great things about April (in addition to rain showers) is that it is National Poetry Month, and you can sign on to receive a fine and beautiful poem every single day. Beats heck out of a marketing newsletter, and leads you to writers you’d either never heard of or long since forgot about.

Kenneth Koch edited the first book of poetry I ever owned; previously, I’d been swiping from my dad’s shelf. Today I found a lovely and complicated poem that Koch wrote about his own father, “To My Father’s Business”. It illuminates how parental expectations, for better or worse, can play into our career choices.

I thought I might go crazy in the job

Staying in you

You whom I could love

But not be part of

Get on over to Keri Smith’s crazy tangle of web links, collectively known as The Wish Jar, and start exploring. She is a modern day John Cage, a renegade public artist with few boundaries, little apparent ego, and a really good publishing contract. She is the type of artist who does stuff that surely you or I could have done–but we didn’t.

And why not?

As I catch my breath from the move and start picking up all the loose ends I left dangling when I blew across the country, I find her simple statement above says it perfectly. Why kick myself because (for example) I still don’t have a finished manuscript ready for publisher submission? Why berate myself because my fancy new business card bears a web URL which does not yet exist?! Nevermind the current condition of my nails, which, thanks to a filing accident, look like a slumber-party manicure given by a sleep deprived 4th grader.

The list goes on. But a gal can’t make herself miserable. Or can she?

Look how the sun has emerged, despite

expectations and the wringing of hands.

A new warmth arises on the April wind.

I am here again at an old crossroads:action

at odds with intention. Accomplishment sacrificed

to the short-term pleasure of just being here.

–Barbara Swift Brauer, from “Changing Forecast”

West Marin Review, Spring 2008

Do pardon my ridiculously long hiatus. What kind of devoted blogger just up and vanishes like that? Read the rest of this entry »

Check out the “Around the Clock” work issue that Skirt! magazine has just put out. The free monthly circular is geared toward women and specializes in personal essays. I usually think its layout wastes a lot of paper (which the pope has just named a cardinal sin, for goodness sake!) so I’m glad to see increased content online.

I’m trying not to hold it against them that they rejected my essay for this issue. Is this a good thing? Has their rejection made me annoyed, or just more determined? Luckily, I inherited my dad’s hard-headedness. They will hear from me again ….

[Footprints across a frozen lake, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Massachusetts.]

One of the hardest things to do—for freelancers or anyone—can be to stop and make yourself take a vacation. I’m not sure how credible I am making such a statement, given that I just returned from the snowy Berkshires, plus took that jaunt last fall to Spain, but bear with me ….

On the surface, it seems impossible that a freelancer would have any trouble arranging a vacation. I mean, if I’m in charge of my own schedule, what’s the problem? But generally, the freelance life is less predictable than a nine-to-five one, and harder to tame. I’ve traded an infinitely structured life for an infinitely flexible one. I never know when a contract might come in, so am always hesitant to plan anything at all, including a trip to visit my grandmother. And if I do, be darn sure I’m not entirely escaping—I’ll have my laptop in tow.

Well, at least I’ll try to have my laptop in tow.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a fantastic little bookshop in Lenox, Massachusetts this week, I found a book called The Gift by Lewis Hyde. The title refers to that certain something we each individually have to offer. A kind of cult classic (recently going into its 25th edition) it was called “the best book I know of for talented but unacknowledged creators” by Margaret Atwood. I’m only partway through, but when I ran across this May Sarton quote, I knew I wanted to keep reading:

“There is only one deprivation … and that is not to be able to give one’s gift … The gift, turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.”

If we can’t find a way to share what we have to offer–and many can’t at their day jobs–we’re lost. But I believe that we are meant to continue trying.