Wayside diaries week 1: escape is calling... 📞

Dispatches from the roadsides of Europe & Iceland, and the strangeness of life on location.

I haven’t written anything lately, and the reason for that is life is not a linear path. It’s a series of meanders and about-turns, always surprising you with a new direction just when you’d figured out where you were going.

Just as we were picking up the pieces of our broken dream (the new van, if you remember) we were handed an opportunity that was difficult to pass: 8 weeks travelling and filming around Europe for a TV documentary, our fourth season working with a Japanese film crew.

We debated it, we argued, we soul-searched and mulled things over, until we finally came to the conclusion that we should accept, drop everything, put our lives on hold and go.

Because when escape calls– you don’t send it to voicemail.

Even if it means putting your real dreams on hold a little longer. Even if it means leaving work for the 7th time. Even if it means pouring all of your time and energy into fixing up an old van that leaks, rusts and drives like shit so you can go.

Because all of this seems somehow worth it to escape the mundanity, to not know how every day for the next 2 months will look. To see something different, even if different is just another flavour of difficulty.

What’s driving me to escape is a sort of Stockholm syndrome, the fear of staying too long and getting too comfortable in one place. I fear that’s one of the reasons we nearly didn’t take the job, that it seemed easier to stay here and grind away slowly than take the unpredictable option. But it’s a slow-acting poison this comfort, slowly stripping away all of the joys and freedoms you have in life until you’re left with a kind of muted acceptance.

If I’d told my younger self she’d be getting paid to travel and presenting a TV show to millions (!) of viewers, she would’ve been ecstatic. The reality is a little different. Long days, early mornings, sometimes being filmed from the moment we wake up and drink tea to the minute we go to bed. Every part of our lives being recorded, scrutinised, analysed and philosophised.

Being thrown into the deep end with spontaneous interviews. Sitting there as they wring the philosophical towel of every last drop of moisture, milking you for every thought you’ve got. Japanese people love symbolism, they love hidden meaning, the poetry of life. But there’s not always poetry to be found in pulling over in a lay-by full of rubbish to eat lunch because we’ve been up since 6 and we’re starving.

It’s exhausting, it’s exciting, it’s an 8 week long whirlwind.

“Enjoy your holiday!” someone at work said to me.

“Oh no,” I replied, “it is not a holiday.”

The truth is we’ll return more mentally, physically and emotionally drained than when we left. That’s a fact. But at least the next 2 months will be a linear kind of stress; we’ll only have one thing to focus on, and the multitude of stresses of home pulling me in different directions until I feel my limbs tearing apart will be gone, left behind. A singular focus, be it challenging or rewarding, or a little of both, is what I crave.

And the truth is, nothing pulls my soul more than the promise of adventure. Already my mind is glimmering with thoughts of camping and bathing under the aurora borealis, the barren black rock landscapes of Iceland, even the biting cold. I’ve missed the expansive horizons, having a reason to pay attention to driving again.

I find myself even longing for the deep, alpine valleys of Switzerland and their hidden hot springs, a country I’d spent little time in due to their restrictive wild camping laws. I’m relishing the thought of traveling through Iceland in November, a time when few tourists visit and the roads will surely be empty and windswept. I’m even looking forward to the 3 day sailing to reach the island, so sick am I with the mundanity of routine at home.

It’s only now all the to-do lists are done that I allow myself to begin to dream.

The funny thing is we’ll drop our entire lives at the drop of a hat, film and present a 3 hour long documentary, then return 2 months later and go back to cheffing and delivering pizzas. We don’t get stopped in the street and recognised (rarely). We don’t even get the viewer figures to know how many people watched it.

Life is surreal. Dream jobs are never 2D, and opportunities can be both a blessing and a a hardship.

So after all the debating, stressing, arguing, despairing, welding, sanding, painting, packing… we’re finally leaving. Tomorrow we set course for Switzerland.

Oh and if you’re made it this far, you’re probably wondering how this all happened. Really we’re just a couple of hot spring nerds who checked our junk email one day, and could never have imagined the next four years panning out like this.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to follow along with this next chapter, you can subscribe below and I’ll send you these rambling diaries from the road— fragments, dispatches, and whatever else falls out of the typewriter from time to time.

–Lucy 💙