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The Nation's Pulse
My Year of Living Frivolously
It helps to give up one Washington for another, better one.
LYNDEN, Washington — “Waste more time.”
Rarely had your scribe bothered to make New Year’s resolutions, much less follow through on them. This one was different. As the clock turned over to 2010, it’s what I set out to do in earnest.
The details up to that point are tedious. After humping it in D.C. since 2003, I was tired. Tired of the politics, tired of the godawful weather, tired of D.C.’s culture of pointless productivity, endless boozing, and ambition uber alles.
I wanted to get out and, more to the point, to not take D.C. home with me. One huge problem long-term denizens of D.C. face is reentry. The tempo of normal America is slower. Many of the habits you pick up in D.C. do not serve you well elsewhere. This leads to frustration on, say, visits home to the family.
Thus, the resolution. “Waste more time.” It was too short to forget, too pungent to ignore, too much of a stretch to allow easy rationalizing. Time to stop and smell the blackberries rather than type furiously on them, to finally take frivolous living seriously.
How did this resolution play out? It started in May with a test drive. My friend Tim needed to drive from D.C. to Seattle and wanted company. We made it in just under three days in his turbocharged Jetta TDI. In one stretch, we covered 500 miles in six hours.
The new job helped. The old one chained me to a desk in D.C. This new one came with the freedom to work elsewhere and travel. A trip back to the good Washington in June to celebrate the kid brother’s birthday turned into an extended stay and then a change of residence, with trips to D.C.
The new wheels helped as well. The speedometer of my slightly used 2001 Dodge Stratus climbed 12,000 miles in six months, with trips to Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and the back roads of Whatcom and Skagit Counties. (Who knew there was a town called Concrete?)
Ultimately mileage is just a number. I went places and did things I would not have done before, to softball games, batting cages, caverns, motocross races. I spent a week at the county fair, rode a helicopter, spelunked in the Ape Caves, and was christened an “honorary Mexican” by actually Mexican relatives.
You might suppose all this wasted time made for less work output, though that’s not clear. I finished and saw two books published, helped to launch and maintain two websites, and whipped up plenty of op-eds, blog posts, interviews, and speeches.
Maybe more could have been accomplished, but that’s beside the point. “Waste more time” finally gave me permission to begin putting together a life that was about more than production and ambition. It would be pretty hard to top for next year, so I’m thinking: don’t even try.
About the Author
Jeremy Lott is editor of RealClearPolicy.com, RealClearBooks.com and RealClearReligion.org and associate editor of RealClearScience.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (12) | Leave a comment
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Richard Baker| 12.31.10 @ 10:44AM
Mr. Lott:
I grew up in Northern Virginia and always felt as if life within the Beltway was sort of a Land of Oz fantasy. Have lived other places within the US and notice the strangeness of the DC area when I go home to visit friends and family. Enjoy your new life.
Margie| 12.31.10 @ 1:08PM
You freed yourself up to enjoy the life God gave you and it's borne the fruit of happy production.
Well done!
Seek| 12.31.10 @ 1:34PM
Fine piece, but I think Jeremy confuses his speedometer with his odometer. Happy New Year anyway.
Jeremy Lott | 12.31.10 @ 2:05PM
Seek: Ugh. Yes, odometer is the word I meant to use. Happy New Year.
erry| 12.31.10 @ 8:13PM
Having lived in Lynden for the last 11 years, there is no place like it, also travelling to DC on occasion, there is nowhere like that :(. We need to move the capital to Kansas and let the District of Columbia cool for a few hundred years.
Indrid Cold | 1.1.11 @ 1:44AM
You were wise to come to Washington, even wiser to explore the North Cascades Highway. I moved to Seattle in the mid 90s, and lived in Winthrop for a couple of years. The Methow Valley and North Cascades impart a sense of freedom and grandeur that you can't describe--you just have to experience it. And I've been up through Lynden on my way to Vancouver--also a gorgeous area.
erry| 1.1.11 @ 3:40AM
A fantastic place to live and raise kids, but I still havent been able to get the state to stop issueing immigrant visa's to Californians. Why do they want Washington to be as messed up as California.
Wxcynic| 1.1.11 @ 1:23PM
Same reason Washingtonians(and others) are messing with Montana. Move to a place you like, then "improve" it. Now, if only we could get the liberals in one place at the same time and conduct a surgical strike or fence them out. Eastern portions of Washington, Oregon, California, even Montana are pretty conservative but we are all losing ground to the cities.
Richard Baker| 1.1.11 @ 10:17AM
erry:
Agree with moving it. However, moving it to Kansas would ruin Kansas. Let's put the government on ships and then sink the ships.
Pelligrino| 1.3.11 @ 10:50PM
Mr. Baker, you win! Superb! Best post of the entire weekend. No question! Thank you. (just do it over the deepest canyon one can find in the North Atlantic)
Diogenes| 1.3.11 @ 9:11AM
Sadly I had to go the other way...Seattle/Tacoma to DC...yet another victim of our Jobless recovery. The Evergreen State's real unemployment is sitting around 15% or more. In DC...it isn't. Throw in more dictatorship of the majority (House/Senate/Governor under the Dems) and it is no longer the place where I grew up.
I've no plans to stay in Virginia...but it will be a long time before I go back "home."
joe| 1.4.11 @ 12:37AM
just started the Mark Twain autobiography. suspect he lived with all us hayseeds and did pretty well.
hope you do your best, like your writing and hope you don't make us wait a hundred years for any of it.
what a thing, to think that anyone would care a hundred years later!
doubt any author in 2011 can really think it.