I did this long enough to know it can only be for a season, I can't do it as a full time lifestyle. I met a few guys making an attempt to live as a full time nomad but after a year or two they were burned out. I think that was the most important thing I learned over the months and miles so I never lost perspective.
People in general piss me off but I am certain I piss a few people off too. As I travel through the world I use a principal from the book, The Art of War, it says "Be cordial to everyone but always have a plan to kill them". Working retail for more then 40 years has taught me to act vulnerable and friendly but keep people at arms length.
Unfortunately this became ingrained into my personality. The wall between me and the world around me has been there since I was a child. As the decades past I added more and more wall. Even after I became aware of this and made an attempt to demolish it, connecting with the people around me is still a crap shoot.
Very few have breached the walls of my fortress. Even fewer have remained for long. Only one has been welcomed completely. It took someone very special to open the heavy fortress door. I have a few friends that have peeked inside but it's a two steps forward, one step back process.
I once took pride in being that rugged individual nomad. An adventure with a beginning and end is healthy but running from the world is not. I did the comfortably numb thing with alcohol for years. This type of wall has destroyed many people. I was fortunately rescued from this fate decades ago.
I still struggle with human contact. I enjoy people but to a point and I know community is how humans function the best. A relationship with God is incomplete without other people. The monastery model is flawed, isolated from the world to ponder God in a meditative environment sounds very holy but it is just another method of hiding. An occasional spiritual journey may clear our minds and spirits but communing with others is where it's at.
Jesus is a good example of a balance. He worked with his hands, hung out with common people, made friends with fishermen, had public encounters with people who were hostile to him and he took time to isolate and commune with his father.
I spend plenty of time alone. While I fidget doing "stuff," I stay silent but my mind keeps spinning. I can always get spun up about something. I future trip about things that probably won't happen, relive and regret things I can't change, criticize myself too much, love myself too much and escape too much.
I do force read a little Big Book and a little Bible, I check the political soap opera, scan world events then listen to nonpolitical books about world and military history, space exploration, aviation, baseball and biographies of interesting people. I need to be centered and clear minded so I am aware of the computer principle, garbage in garbage out.
Something new I have implemented is using my phone to make human contact. I text several male friends, call them occasionally and once or twice a week have breakfast or coffee. This has never been easy for me but each time I do it gets easier.
It's ironic, I text, call and have coffee but if I stop for a week, I get texts, phone calls and an invitation to have coffee. We eventually all begin to answer texts, phone calls and have coffee. We still hate doing it, but a minute after we answer or show up we are glad we did.
Living in a world of first time last time human interactions is a form of isolation. No one ever gets a real peek past the wall, I can edit the view of what's inside.
Once I gave up hiding life got better. I learned this late in life but not too late. Whatever I was searching for on my bicycle was always right in front of me.
Tear down the wall does not happen all at once it comes down brick by brick. Other humans are now friends not just subjects in an anthropology study.
