The epic journey has come to a close. I’m going to offer a few different kinds of reflection and summary posts of this trip.

Here’s one for the statisticians and the summarizers among you.

What I thought was going to be a day of just driving home brought me one last surprise, which was a visit to the Corning Museum of Glass.

I have been through more than half of the states in this very divided country, and I’ve had some deeply wonderful experiences in many of them. I am looking forward to seeing my parents and dog and to sleeping in my own bed. I’m excited to move ahead with some of the professional projects and ideas that have arisen on this trip, and to see what aspects of this adventure will carry on their influence in my next steps.

One thing that’s really refilled my cup on this trip is how many friends I’ve been able to see across the country and back.

I think it was the Nagoski sisters, in their book Burnout, who talked about the surprising realization that what mid-life crises look like for women tends to be very different from the masculine stereotype of sportscar-buying, younger-women-dating, burning-down-the-bridges. Instead, it comes as a questioning of what we’re prioritizing for ourselves and an examination of how we want to feel/how we’re not feeling that we can change.

There’s truly something special about feeling like you click with weirdos whose oddness matches your own. The most magic places and experiences are definitely not for everyone, but you don’t get something truly special without turning some people off.

As this trip comes to a close, I’m thinking about how I want to write about it in some larger way. What are you interested in hearing about from my 2+ months around the USA?

I took my friends out to the Western Slope of Colorado, returning to the area I last left behind in December 2020 after resigning from the job that I’d moved out there for just before the pandemic hit in a globally massive way.

It’s going to take me a while to untangle and peruse through all the feelings this brought up.

Love to these ladies

They helped me through COVID times

That drew us all close

I’m here in Denver for a few days to surprise a friend who is about to have both a birthday of her own and a birth day of a new baby. Haven’t mentioned the details, because it’s been a surprise months-long in the planning, and I didn’t want to risk word getting out.