This has nothing to do with Bruce Springsteen. I don’t mind ole Bruce, Born in the USA is one of my favorite albums before Bruce turned into a whiny doppelgänger of Woody Allen.

Just raspier. Bruce’s voice coach should have told him to sing from the diaphragm after belching Born in the USA a few hundred times.

Ok bye say goodbye to Bruce.

Have you ever noticed when you go on week long vacation that towards the end your mind starts suggesting changes for your habits or lifestyle? You may be driving in the car on the way home from the beach thinking

“I think I’m going to join a gym when I get back”

Or

“I should eat more fish”

“I should walk more”

“I’d love a new hobby”

It doesn’t have to be something health wise or physically beneficial

“I’ve got too much shit in my closet I should to get rid of some things”

“I should read more books instead of scrolling ”

Or the opposite “I’ve got some great ideas for a new work project. Something completely different and unique”

I’m not the only one who has this monologue playing in my mind toward the end of my time off. I’ve listened to friends and employees talk about these things when they come back to work. I’ve done it most of my life although I see it much differently now. A different perspective.

It pops in our heads as we drive home or maybe it’s the last couple of days at the beach and your mind has started to assimilate a new part of your routines. You’re walking in the sand, grounding yourself whether you realize it or not.

Roaming a new city square out of town you’ve never visited before.

Exploring a new country, culture and or new language you’re not familiar with.

New ideas and thoughts are slowly downloading in your mind. Your daily and weekly routines are frazzled. Your thoughts no longer are looping, your nervous system is observing new activity. The old you is reacting to a new reality. A new setting.

New game.

As it’s absorbing all of your new energy and thoughts it’s trying to feed you upgrades on your new environment. Once you’ve settled in. My observance is the first day or two your mind is almost pushing you back home to your old self. It only wants you safe. You may break down on the way out there, plane may be delayed, weather might turn terrible, luggage may get lost but once we arrive and reset our minds go “ahhhhhh”

That’s our brain saying “oh we are really trying something new. We are committed? Let’s do this”

All the time we are living what hopefully is our best lives during this time our brains start connecting to a new WiFi connection. Not that old one that drones while we work from home or plays the same 15 YouTube channels in your mind. You begin to get wider bandwidths, new connections, clearer signals, less distortion.

Your brain is assimilating. It recognizes you’re enjoying a new experience and environment. The universe, your own little reality because we all have our own, begins to feel these vibrations. It lifts you up, it peps your step.

And your reality follows suit.

The higher your vibration the clearer your WiFi connection is to your soul.

Good, good, good, good vibrations. 🎶

Many times the WiFi network starts before you go on vacation. Maybe you spent 4 months at the local CrossFit before a cruise because you wanted a better beach body. Or you’re spending more time in the mountains while you’re training for a long trail run in Colorado.

You’re training your body and mind for a new reality, a new you. You’re physically and mentally changing your surroundings. You bring your new life briefly into existence.

Happy

Tan

Toned

Relaxed

Less distracted

Challenged

Still

And then you go home. You begin to resume your old life, reality.

You make your morning coffee at 5:15 am just like you did the week before you left. You start your weekly laundry routine, emails are shuffling in. It’s Monday so dinner will be chicken and rice and you’ll eat it in the same seat at the table that you assigned for yourself years ago. Bedtime is 10pm you’ll roll upstairs, brush your teeth in the same mirror, one last pee, plug your phone next to your nightstand and assume your natural sleeping position on whatever side of the bed was deeded to you as a couple.

You drive to work the next day after your oatmeal breakfast and next thing you know the old you is back.

Maybe you’re a “my job is slowly killing me” person

Or “why do these things keep happening to me?” as you’re running late for work and run out of gas

“I hate my body. Nothing fits me right anymore” after you’ve been back for a month and fell back on your eating habits.

You’re right back to the old you. You had a glimpse of an alternate version of you but it slipped away just a nonchalant as it entered you.

A download

An updated version of you

Your reality was ready to change at the snap of your fingers. And you let it go like a child releasing a helium balloon.

Chad, what?

My common way of thinking and perceiving things got ripped out of me in a roof top tent in Beaufort over a year ago. I’ve talked about this several times although it took almost a year for me to feel comfortable about it enough to mention it. Some think I’m crazy and I just may be. Maybe psilocybin melted my brains the night before although it wasn’t a big dosage. 4-5 grams max and it was the next evening when it happened. 26 hours after my little trip.

Psilocybin opens doors in your mind. Your brain after so many years digs deep ruts in how you think and perceive things. All psilocybin does is it opens new routes while you’re enjoying the show. You think differently, your traumas, agendas, ideals, beliefs take a back seat for a while.

Mine are still on break. Or at least some of it is. I have my trauma issues but I recognize them now and reckon with them. Religion went out the door, political beliefs and my normal daily routines.

I received a download. A transmission of sorts. Your brain is a receiver with a WiFi connection. We’ll come back to that if I can maintain my concentration. I’m a tad exhausted from driving 2000 miles in two days. I’m back home btw as of midnight last night.

I recognized my post vacay thinking patterns years ago. I’d come back from my annual gulf trip and I’d feel my old thinking trying to assimilate into another Chad. I’d take home a couple of new habits or routines I’d picked up playing around the beach all week and insert them into my daily schedule. Some would stick while others dissolved as I went back into my normal routine. The balloon would slowly float away. The download I received sat unused for weeks and my brain memory would push it into the iCloud to allow other storage to stay and stagnate over time.

Upload received. App remained unopened.

I always saw it as some fresh ideas and thoughts coming to me because I had idle time to think. I’m not cooking brunch for the masses, I’m not doing inventory, working on schedules or food cost. My mind is at ease. Not as many distractions. I was still a tad muddled. I liked to indulge in a few bottles of vodka when I was decompressing a few years back. Your mind heals over time when you put the bottle down and if/when you’re paying attention its antenna picks up better signals. I would’ve never noticed my WiFi connection if I hadn’t stopped drinking. My downloads would come and be disregarded over time. I was a distracted drone for most of my life. I’m not saying alcohol kills all your downloads. I’m only saying it did that to mine. I was also drinking daily.

Heavily

I started doing these long trips out of my truck back in 2020. I was still drinking then but I was entering the twilight of my drinking career. In fact in retrospect these trips helped kick the habit by allowing me to shake up my environment.

I began these excursions well before I paid any attention to my behavior loops. My ruts, my own little Punxsutawney life as I call it. Stuck in the same shit different day concept. Driving long distances has its advantages. It gives you time to think. No phones, no internet on some routes or the traffic has you so frazzled your hands are glued to the steering wheel and your only focus is watching the road. Whereas the week before you were sitting on your sofa enjoying your favorite tv show and media reels.

These trips have the capacity of hardening you. They may begin to change you while you’re knee deep in mud scraping your shoes off in 40° mornings in the middle of a desert or when you come back home and you’re evaluating your reset. That’s all that it really is – a reset to revamp yourself. To forget your patterns and routines. You get stripped from your comfort zones. All of them. You’re sleeping in shady parking lots, camping in a random places without the feeling of security. Howling hail and winds trying to push you off a cliff while surrounded by a herd of bovines. Sitting on the side of a Texas backroad pouring gas in your truck because you didn’t pass a gas station for 60 miles. Bathing out of a bowl while standing on a rock so your feet don’t get stay dirty. Brewing coffee inside your truck because you can’t light a flame in 40 mph winds. Climbing a mountain you’ve never heard of before because you saw a sign on the side of the road. I do some of these with fake bravado and confidence while others I do trembling scared shitless.

I strip myself completely from my comfort zones and feel the downloads come in. It took a few years for me to recognize this.

Recognize doesn’t work here. I’ve always observing when I’m thinking on all the new things when I’m out and about but it took a bit to grasp what my mind was trying to do.

For 10 days I’m completely changing my routines deliberately. My phone screen time drops dramatically, my sleep schedule is erratic, my routines are thrown out the window all the while I’m trying to navigate a whole new terrain. Distractions are slowly dissolving as my mind is carving out new habits and thoughts every moment. There’s no tv, work phone calls or even small talk with friends. I’m creating a new reality for myself. A completely different life albeit temporarily. This last one was a tough one. Weather changed our plans completely I had to map out a new route and adventure on the go. I was already out of my comfort zone and jumped into a whole new reality in 24 hours. We dipped out of Utah and headed seven hours south to Sedona. On a grand scale not a big deal we were in the region but I’d been planning the old route for weeks. I’ve been working on being more of a go with the flow type of person and not letting a change of plans ruin my day. Sedona was an option before we left I’d kept one eye on the weather the whole time as a just in case.

“Chad, you do this to rip up your comfort zone and this is a classic example of how to make it happen” is what I told myself.

Seize the fucking day.

We arrived in Sedona late afternoon. Made dinner and went to bed exhausted after the long drive. I made it a point to find a solid hike and googled “hardest hike in Sedona” and set my sails for Bear Mountain. Might as well go big or go home. Bear Mountain will screw with you because of its false summits. You rock climb up the first part and think “that’s not so bad” only to see a couple of hikers hundreds of yards away climbing up another mountain.

You climb up that mountain and think “oof that was a bit rough but I did it” only to see those other hikers are going up yet another ridge of another mountain. That’s the last one by the way it’s only 2.5 miles up but it’s steep, filled with loose rocks and some overhangs that will make your ass clench. I’m terrified of heights. I do these type of things to yet again take me out of my comfort zones. I enjoy them but it’s usually afterwards. There are parts where I want to throw up. Sometimes I do. In my head the whole way up I’m telling myself “this will pay off for you” I’m not sure why that was playing in my head over and over but it was. It kept me going. These hikes are tough when you’re exhausted from driving and lack of sleep. I can do Table Rock in my sleep but there have been days where it’s kicked my ass because I didn’t mentally prepare myself. The hike was tough. When I got back to the truck the only thing I could say to Shane was “water. I need water” I gulped a quart of Gatorade in 2 minutes. Ate lunch and died in my truck bed for a few hours while Shane went fishing.

Our itinerary was screwed and we had to start heading east again soon. Our original plan was to go through Colorado and camp somewhere off of 70. Possibly red rocks area. I opted for New Mexico, I had done a little research on some cool places because New Mexico is on my radar for a trip next year post summer and recalled a spot where you could see the stars at night. My mind pinged on the Cosmic campground, Glenwood NM a 3 acre dispersed camping area just outside of Alpine Arizona (a place I had no idea existed and it’s beautiful). We drove for several hours to this spot literally in the middle of nowhere and found a swell spot on top of a hill. We heated up some MREs there was zero civilization within 30 miles. I looked at Shane and said “I think we are suppose to be here” and Shane nodded his head in agreement. The weather, the rerouting and change of plans took us to this little hill in the middle of nowhere to sit under the stars.

I spent the evening staring straight up to the sky. I’d walk from one side of my truck to the other I wanted to see every star in the cosmos. The skyline was like a cosmic circuit board. You could see the pulses of the stars and meteor showers. There was no moon present. The stars were all ours that evening. I soaked up the universe, gave my traveling companion a hug and went to bed.

We spent the next two days driving home, road weary but happy. We stayed the night in OK City at a hotel but I chose to sleep in my camper. The trip was coming to an end but I wanted one more night of away from my comfort zones.

I used the shower at the hotel the next morning I still had red mud stains from Moab a week ago. I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in days and my first immediate thought was “you’re already changing”

That’s when this small epiphany began to grow in my mind.

My first thought was to shed my old skin.

“Wanna change my clothes my hair my face”

It was a weird random thought at that moment. It wasn’t a “go buy some new clothes” thing more of the person I was staring at in the mirror was waving goodbye.

“Now’s your chance to once again update yourself. Your download is complete”

“Do with it as you will”

I’m paraphrasing obviously it’s difficult to explain the experience.

My mind, body and soul was wide open to change, new habits and perspectives. I was model of clay at that moment. 10 days of wrenches in my cogs. I was primed for deliberate manipulation.

It was acknowledgement.

All of this time, this is why I’ve been obsessed with doing these trips.

Each time I go out, I come back a different person. I shed a little more of the old me. I break myself down, take away all my daily distractions and old responsibilities.

I could break down every shift from every trip.

But

Maybe another time. This entry keeps gaining legs. It keeps running.

There’s a direct correlation between my transitions and my travels. There is/was no reckoning without them. Throwing myself into a deep hole of uncertainty and uncomfortable situations = series of downloads.

Natural WiFi

You might as well have a radio dial installed in your noggin.

Tune in to who you’re supposed to be

Your ideal resonance is out there waiting for it.

Find your station, there are billions of versions of you.

The hard part is once you find your frequency you have to keep it in range. Just like driving with the FM radio on. You find a great station and listen to it until you are no longer in range. It becomes static, distortion. You start turning the dial to find another station just like it and lose your signal.

This one is all yours but you have to maintain your resonance to hold onto it. You can’t keep holding on to your old presets.

Resets change your presets

That’s the tough part. Once you get home and back into your comfort zone it feels so good to be back home. Warm bed, electricity, coziness

Your old routines and loops are waiting for you.

The choice is yours if you want to save game at this point and continue a new game or turn off the switch and go back to the same player character. How many references am I gonna make here?..

You have to change your mental image of yourself. Your preprogramming.

“I come home in the morning, I go to bed feeling the same way

I ain’t nothing but tired, man I’m just tired and bored with myself”

Shed that skin my man

The stars spoke to me that night in New Mexico.

And I’m still listening. That’s why I’m writing this because I’ve been instructed to. Maybe not for you personally but for me. It’s a part of my downloads.

I needed a spark

“You can’t start a fire without a spark” Shane if you’re reading this I’m sure you’re enjoying the irony of that quote.

That whole trip, the rain, the snow and cold rerouted us. Took us to the night stars instead of the sun. It was supposed to happen. And it did.

I was literally dancing in the dark, under the stars.

“Messages keep getting clearer”

Download complete.

Peace.