Journal 2025-05-10

Blah blah blah some words. I’m at a Starbucks in Big Spring, and it feels like kinda being in the real world right now. At least, it feels for a moment like not being way out in the middle of nowhere and driving for hours. I have another day of that experience today. I have a feeling is does something to the mind, spending that much time on this huge empty road.

I’m glad to have gotten a workout in yesterday. My legs are absolutely blasted, even though I only really got about three-quarters of the workout in. The power suddenly shut off in the middle of the day, and I felt neither like waiting it out nor working out in the dark, so I just took that as a sign to move on. But I did have another one of those experiences where I did a heavy leg press and then felt light headed afterwards. Those truly do take me to my limit, and that’s great but it also is a really weird experience and always throws off the rest of my workout from the exertion.

What else, what else what else what else. I don’t really know. I have so many things I’d like to do and get done, but I don’t really want to stop the trip to sit around for a few days and work on my blog. That sounds dumb. But there’s still plenty of ideas flowing, plus I really want to just plow through and finish The Way of Kings and write it up, if only to get it off my plate of things to do.

(Briefly unrelated, but I was looking at places to eat before I went all the way in to Big Bend, and I saw a Salvadoran restaurant that sold pupusas. Enticing.)

Anyways, so much to do and so little time to do it. I don’t quite know how people balance the “do interesting things” and also “write about them” parts of life. There’s probably a lot to say about West Texas, or at least the experience of driving it. The solitude, the decay, a strange paranoia that sets in. Mirages. I’m probably putting my own spin on this whole thing — there’s also the cute little desert hares that were bouncing around my campsite — but all of that does feel real, and I can imagine how ones mind would jump to the blood-soaked sands of some desert battle and the brutality of a cowboy gang, being left for dead on some outcropping and wandering aimlessly hoping to find somewhere to get help. All of that seems huge and terrifying and incredibly real. I don’t know if it all happened, but it’s real nonetheless.

My brain is still very much waking up. Sleeping in a tent is still something I’m getting acclimatized to. I may be getting 8 hours of sleep, but it’s 8 hours of light sleep, I think. I remember being vaguely awake for parts of the night, tossing and turning, so I’m clearly not getting the deepest rest. And I definitely need that deep rest, after so much driving and a workout and all of that. My body isn’t completely shot or anything, but my attention is kinda all over the place. Plus I ordered some extremely strange coffee — I’m 90% sure I’ve ordered this before and also didn’t like it then, but I promptly forgot about the whole thing — that’s all coffee at the bottom and nothing at the top, so I’ve essentially just been drinking cinnamon milk the whole time. I’m going to say screw this and go get me a Red Bull or something, because I think I need a small kick in the pants. Having a beer last night probably also didn’t help. One beer really throws me off nowadays. But damn, Kona Big Wave is actually really delicious. I remember getting that from the ABC stores in Waikiki, it’s so tasty. I miss Hawaii so much, the coffee and the food and the beach, the humid tropical air. The bustling of that main road of Waikiki, the delicious food at Senia and Sushi Sho. Rising above the clouds at Haleakala. That’s where I think heaven is, if it’s anywhere at all — up there on the rim of the volcano. Watching the sun set over all the clouds. You’re untouchable up there, all on top of the entire world, among the gods. I loved driving up there, and the freedom of driving back down — even if I was horribly concerned about the car battery driving and made that stupid (but correct!) gamble that it would recuperate a lot of its battery on the descent.

But I’m off now to get some real caffeine. I think I have a problem with these energy drinks, but that’s for another day. Peace out.