It looks like I’m leaving Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. I should probably start looking for another place–I pull out in two days.

“The way you live gives me incredible anxiety,” my one friend says. “Never knowing where you’re going and what you’re doing …it would drive me a little crazy, I think.”

The way you live gives me anxiety.

The same places, the same schedule, the same people, living and swimming in the same way day after day–sounds like death to me. I adapt and go on auto-pilot too much; knowing the way to the grocery store and where the cheapest gas is, going to bed at the same time to get up at the same time, rudely awakened by some obnoxious sound–save for those precious couple of weeks you are graciously granted for a vacation once a year. Plodding along until you can retire and live the life you really want. Except you’ll be too old, if you even make it that far.

I want to have adventures. I want to throw myself on the wind and let the way show me the the way. Life needs full rein of me for me to be truly fulfilled. My God, the Universe, Divinity, needs to be my steering wheel and not just the spare tire in the trunk.

I didn’t mean to let it get this late–then again, I never do. I had in the back of my mind a few places, but the Women’s Village isn’t taking any campers in due to COVID.

Bonnie adding her disappointment to mine, “It’s lonely here. The village is meant to be filled with women.”

“Maybe in the fall,” I suggest

“Maybe in the fall,” echoes back.

That’s ages away.

I’ve got a scope scheduled for the eighth, so I can’t go too far away. Her place in Sugarloaf was going to be just far enough so I could write, and not so far that I had a big drive back to the hospital. Next…

I have a timeshare type thing. I own weeks and I can trade. I called to see if I could get in at the one place here in Key West.

She let me down easy before she even looked, “We rarely have openings in Key West. It’s so popular we’ve limited it to one booking only once every four years so there’s more equal opportunities….” Her voice trailed off… “Oh, wait (I can hear her puzzled look) it looks like there was a cancelation and there is a unit available the week of the fourth through the eleventh. Wow. I can’t believe it.”

I can. I’m the queen of cancelations. It’s definitely been a theme of my travels. Most of my best places have come because someone changed their mind and offered it up at about the same time I was saying I needed it. This stuff happens at a higher level. It organized for me as opposed to by me. And it feels like a gift is being bestowed. It’s the only way to fly.

And my relinquishing control and not knowing, let’s the force of wisdom come in. Life lives through me, I don’t need to tell it what to do, I just need to get out of the way. Traveling full-time makes me do that in a way that staying in one place doesn’t. In the book Vagabonding: The Art of Long-Term Travel he speaks to that in an eloquent way, of which I will attempt to summarize. He talks about the rawness of travel; being away from the comforts of home, unable to grab at the familiar opens you to something bigger. And you find who you are in this melting of your old self and opening into something new. It changes you. That’s what you really pay for.

I book the week and then a few days before at LaConcha on Duval street. Rates are pretty good for Key West, and especially for Fourth of July, but the fireworks are canceled, beaches and bars are closed, so that’s deterred some I’m sure. I’ve been here for a year, and I’ll be at Fort Zach again in August and September, I’ve had plenty of beaches and bars…and will again. Besides, I came here to write. To write and get my health right.

The places are gorgeous. LaConcha is more hotel, with a room across from the pool. It’s a holiday weekend so it turns into a raucous party there. Fireball shots being poured from the bottle on land into the mouths of the mermaids and mermen arched back to receive. No lips touch the bottle and we’re all covered in chlorine. Safe shots at a good distance.

I don’t get much writing done, but I do have a lot of fun. I’m chalking it up to a holiday and tell myself I’ll get crackin at the next place. You gotta celebrate these miracles, these serendipities–proof that Something is taking care of you and you can relax and coast a little.