Brussels. I shouldn’t be in Brussels, I should be in London. I’m in Brussels because a massive power failure rendered all international rail transport out of Amsterdam useless. I have been lied to in four different languages and squashed nose to armpit on a train that, it turns out, I didn’t need to get on.
The blame for my current mess rests fully on my slumping shoulders. I deliberately chose to take the train to Amsterdam instead of flying. Counting the time it takes to get to Heathrow, wait in The World’s Longest Queues, clear security, eat stale sandwiches in the BA Lounge, sit on the tarmac, fly, clear customs, play luggage roulette, train from the airport and taxi to the hotel, travelling by rail is normally only about 45 minutes longer and unimaginably more comfortable.
This time, not so much.
20 minutes out of Waterloo on the outbound leg the Eurostar ground to a halt because of signal failures. This put us just enough behind scheduled that I missed my connection in Brussels and had to take the all-stopping-all-the-time Inter City train to Amsterdam.
The return journey, as outlined above, was a comic adventure of cancellations and misinformation. Still, worse things happen at sea and all in all, if I have to be stuck somewhere, it might as well be the Sheraton Brussels Towers, one of my favourite hotels. Thank GOD for business travel services: one call and they got me a room with a view.
Ten years ago when I still had hair and massive credit card debt, missing a train in Europe meant sleeping in a hostel or more likely a railway platform. No connections, no cash and no clue add up to adventures that I’m more than happy are behind me.
Sometimes, like now, I take a step back and look at my life and am honestly puzzled: Is this what it means to be a grown up? Do other people have lives like this (relentless travel, fucking hard work, relentless travel)? Apart from the boys on my team, I don’t know anyone who lives like this. OK, that’s not exactly true, I have several friends who live on the road. But they are mostly burned out hippies who peddle home-made herbal remedies at psychic fairs or trade hash-brownies for gas.
I work with a guy, I’ll call him Rich because that’s his name, who did my kind of gig for six years. He worked for BP (British Petroleum) and installed computer systems on tanker ships in Asia. He had, it must be said, a blast. He built up about a million air-miles going between London and Singapore, travelled all over Asia, slept with beautiful women and generally had the kind of life most 25 year old males would sacrifice private pieces of their anatomy for.
At 33 he called it quits, flew back to London, married his childhood sweetheart, had a couple of kids and seems to be living happily ever after. I’ve been doing this for two years and am honestly terrified of the thought of going back to riding a desk let alone staying in a city for more than four days in a row. What happens to guys like me? What woman would want us? We’re not exactly the safest bet for a long term stable relationship.
When I was six and I made the decision I wanted to be a photojournalist, more specifically, a war correspondent, I figured I would live on airplanes, be a cynical loaner and eventually retreat to a cabin in Big Sur where I could edit my retrospective show for MOMA.
I’m now 41, live on airplanes, am not quite as cynical or as much of a loaner as I used to be; that cabin in Big Sur costs $2.4 million and a MOMA show of my greatest hits would leave a good deal of white space on the gallery walls.
I take a bit of solace in the fact that I haven’t strayed completely from my childhood ambitions but I am constantly haunted by a feeling that the further I go into the mainstream of the business world the more the six year-old in me becomes horribly disappointed. I rationalize that this is just a phase and because I still take the occasional photograph and write throw-away pulp entries for a blog no one reads that I can still call myself an artist.
Bullshit. I sold out the moment I hung up my cameras and started working behind a keyboard for cash. No amount of rationalizing will change that and for all my agonizing the truth is that I didn’t just skid uncontrollably into my current life, I made an eyes-wide-open decision to abandon my old one; now I have to deal with it.
Walking down a sunny street in Oslo this morning I tried to simply be content with where I was and what I was doing. I wanted to expunge my normal feeling that I should be someplace else whenever I’m not in California. I utterly and totally failed to do this. I in fact failed so badly that I had to sit for a few moments on a park bench and try to regroup. I found myself asking the big question: “will I ever be satisfied anywhere or with anyone?”
Probably not.
I wonder if there is a support group for people like me? Something tailored for folks whose entire life is one giant Attention Deficit Disorder.
“Hi, my name is Mark and since I was 17 I have never lived in any one place for longer than a year. I refuse to buy anything that will not fit in a single suitcase. I don’t want to make any attachment that I am not prepared to break within five minutes and I always carry my passport.”
I’m not sure what “normal” is, but I’m pretty damn sure that how I am is not it.
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