I sit in a Japanese restaurant in St. Louis. I’m listening to Neil Young. When I run my fingers through my hair, I notice a few strands hang there, attracted. Looks like I’m balding.

I’ve missed too many moments of writing recently. I’ll throw words around in my internal monologue and tell myself “Yep, that’s it, going to write that.” I never do. Such glorious scenes missed. Hiking in California, driving a rented Mustang through coastal mountains I may never see again. Cruising  outside of Portland, Oregon with a snow capped behemoth in the distance. The town was named Sandy, and I ate Thai food there out of a restaurant that was also the owner’s house and I drank the Thai iced tea the owner had suggested, it tasted of tamarind and it was one of those moments that I try to savor. Later that night I ended up drinking too much beer and woke up in a hotel room that I can’t even start to recall right now. I had a headache and a flight to catch and a bad taste in my mouth.

My journal hasn’t travelled with me lately. Now that is a sin on my part. I remind myself to pack it and I never do. I feel like my journal judges me, like an old friend who texts you trying to get something back that you borrowed and you never respond out of guilt. Or a pet that you’ve neglecting. There my journal is, looking up at me with big watery eyes. I grab my pen and look at it and turn away with a sigh.

That black Moleskine, the best birthday gift. It tells a story too sad and perfect and predictable to be true. Scriblings in those earlier days. That first trip to Philadelphia. What an innocent and unknowning man I was there. Twenty years old with no idea what this job was but yep I’ll take it. Now my head is a few hairs less and my demeanor a bit more serious and not just serious but I often feel like a phantom, where my actions carry no weight but in reality they carry more weight than before. I just move from one motion to the next. My life doesn’t just move fast, but it’s jet fueled.

I run out of Neil Young and go to Pavement. “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.” It’s a really solid album and features their closest thing to a mainstream hit, “Cut Your Hair.” You’ve all heard it.

I have been to Hollywood. I have been to Chicago. I have been to the Bay Area. I have been to New York City. I even had a job in Austin. Oh what a lovely day where I got to drive my own car in my own town and eat lunch at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant on the company dime. I recently did a twelve day straight stint. The worst part is I eventually enjoyed it. When you travel that much, you start to put your homeward thoughts behind you. I kind of liked it. What if I just removed an apartment out of the equation? Or a car? Constant travel and life on the road, a closet with wheels containing approximately seven proven outfits that, even with a few rewears, could be maintained and washed and when one failed, a Brooks Brother’s is never far. I could be considered a business vagrant, a professional, professional vagabond. So many complications removed.

Recently, I’ve had a strange desire. In certain cities while cruising around in my rental, I think “What if I didn’t take this exit? What if I just kept on and kept on this unfamiliar highway until the car ran out of gas and from there just go on foot. Just go in my business casual, with my suitcase behind me, throw all my phones out of the window on the way there, they would find the car probably two weeks later, but I would be far and gone. I would take my cash out early, and just live off of that. I would throw most of my wallet out too. I would fall off of the grid and no one would know where I was. They would ask, and maybe even search and maybe even find me. But after that it wouldn’t matter. I would have seen the other side and be gone for good. With my strange patchy beard that I grow and an unkempt head of hair.”

I’m not sure what it all means. Maybe I’m losing it.