Left to my own devices, I can be a homebody. I’m pretty content reading, writing, and going for walks without seeing people for a while.
My dad was this way too: “What’s there to go to town for?” he’d always say after we teased him for being a hermit, which has become a repeated family joke whenever running errands.
This is probably relatable for my fellow remote workers, but lots of people probably felt like this during the pandemic.
In his short biography on Emerson’s creative process, Robert D. Richardson writes how Emerson struggled with his tendency of cooping himself up: he was “acutely aware of the pitfalls of the sequestered life, and he struggled to stay in touch with the great outer working world.”
“Now and then a man can and must live alone; but coop up most men, and you undo them,” Emerson said.
If left to my own devices, I’ll stay at home for a week or so — but deeper down I know I feel more fulfilled and curious and excited when I get out and have new experiences, meet new people.
I lived and traveled in a van full-time for a few years, and I loved the feeling of being someplace you’d never been before, of meeting people you’d have never crossed paths with otherwise.
Louis L’Amour, famous for his many paperback westerns, lived this way too. He was perfectly content with reading and writing:
“Given paper with which to write and a typewriter, I can be happy anywhere,” L’Amour said.
But he also traveled the West and the world, talking with strangers and writing down their stories, which he’d weave into his books:
“I have read because I loved reading, and I have learned because I love learning, yet all one needs cannot come from books. It can come from sounds, from music, from the play of light and shadow, from the people one meets or those one does not meet,” L’Amour said.
I often feel a pull between staying home to read and write about my interests, and then to pack up, leave, and experience new things in places I’ve never been before.
There are seasons to staying home, and seasons to discover new things — driving away, having new adventures, finding stories to tell.