Roadworn Optimism

Fleet Foxes - Ragged Wood

Despite our best attempts to hinder it, time continues to pass. It trudges on day after day, with little regard to what we want and when we want it to be each day we wake up. It's that passage of time and the change that tags along for the ride that buried this project under days, months, even years of rubble. It has been three years, one month, and twenty-four days since I first aligned the words on those first posts. Much has changed. Some has not. I am in a different place (many places) and there are different people in my life. But I still have that desire to dress up these memories. Some are true. Well, most if not all are true. The wording, as usual, has been dressed up for a good evening read.

I spend most of my life on the road now. I drive hundreds of (if not a thousand) miles per week to and from locations for work. This gives me a lot of time to listen to music and reflect. But this story is not about a reflection I made on the road, it is a reflection upon the road itself.

Last night I was in my own apartment. Relocated to Matthews, North Carolina (a suburb of Charlotte) and displaced from literally everything and everyone I know. It's rough. At times it makes me feel like shit. But this is what I've done and it's going to end in the best because, well, it's me and there is no other option for me. I have settled in to my apartment and become resigned to the fact that I will spend most of my time here alone. My record player keeps me company. I put on the Fleet Foxes record, as it is one of the best in my collection to play on the record player. It sounds, well, right. Anything can be played on vinyl, but only some albums sound like they were created for a record player; this is one of them.

I lay on the couch through the opening two numbers, pleasantly soothing into the feel of it. Track 3 is Ragged Wood. If you've listened to the album, you know it starts off strong -

"WHOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH--OOOOOOOhhhhhh-oooooohhhhh...."

Pow, like a fist to the gut. It has been over seven months since I was listening to this album in my car. I sang along. Loudly and off-key. Windows down despite it being the middle of January. I felt great. I felt free. I had left my old job, and I was looking ahead. To the future. It was that time that everyone says to themselves "Ok, me! This is it, the beginning of the rest of my life! Things are going to be great. You are finally, unequivocally, on the right track."

But of course I think we all know that it's just deception. Even if we believe it at the time, there's always the nagging sense, that "hey, maybe this wasn't the best idea?"

We'll never really know. Nobody ever does. That's the joy of the human condition - we only get to experience one outcome of each choice, each decision on our path. And so there I was last night, remembering the moment I told myself that this was, definitively, a new beginning. The real start. What a deception. Every single day is a new beginning.

This is not a depressing thought.

This is not some self-depreciating, soul-crushing moment of my life.

This is, assuredly, what it is. Roadworn optimism. Wood weathered and scarred but true, solid true.

Plug in, and turn it up...


Tell me anything you want, any old lie will do.
Call me back to you.