Hotel Habitue 15: Taking home on the road
Spent the week on the water. Will spend tomorrow and next week the same way. Salty breeze permeating the job site, sun reflecting a million diamonds as the tide comes in and winds picks up. Most of my job sites take me inland, engulfed by pine trees. I spent hours staring at the water, shimmers like the shiver of an endless fish. A thing very nearly alive.
The ocean frequently reminds me of my time at sea as a younger man. An adventure which was unexpected, but for which I was ultimately thankful. The kind of experience you can only appreciate a decade later because it seemed like pure misery at the time. The equivalent of sharing a hotel room with a dozen other people. Sleeping quarters scarcely larger than a coffin. Hot nights and cold showers. Four cubic feet for my personal shit. I brought a laptop, an external hard drive, and a lot of books. Some people seemed to bring their entire house. Others brought nothing at all.
It’s the same way now. I have coworkers who bring hot plates, pots, half their kitchen, three suitcases, a cooler, cornhole boards. A 250 pound version of their homes. Others bring nothing at all. No books, no computer. Just work clothes and equipment. There’s no in-between. A Walmart delivery truck or ascetics in jeans and work boots.
Hard for me to to compare deployment to working on the road. And they probably shouldn’t be. Taking an axe to the chest versus ten thousand papercuts with 55 pound stock paper.
I’ve traveled with less and less as the months have gone on. Now it’s just a single book, my personal computer, and a work computer. Setting a framed picture of my wife next to the stiff hotel bed feels stupid. I don’t even take my clothes out of my luggage. If I get too comfortable, I’m afraid I might start to like this lifestyle. But hating it maintains the desire to escape it. It has to be bad. The air conditioner should be fucked up. The person I share a wall with should throw a raging party every night, accidentally set their alarm for two am. There needs to be bedbugs on every inch of fabric, black mold in the coffee maker. A slow tide I constantly have to swim against.