One of the hideous aspects of doing taxes is the fact that I have to account for my whereabouts on every single day, and state whether or not I was working.
While this might be fun when simply musing, it is a massive pain to present in a form accepted by tax and immigration officials.
During the two years I documented yesterday, I was never in my designated residence longer than four weeks at a time.
2006 found me in Seattle, Amsterdam, NYC, San Francisco, Barcelona, Trento, Venice, then back to Seattle again – with lots of trips to London in between.
2007 looks better at a glance but the trips were longer, including a whole summer in the Pacific Northwest, then the South of France, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Denver.
Both years were easier than 2005, when I traveled in a similar fashion and also went on two long book tours.
In the abstract it all looks like great fun, and it would be churlish to claim otherwise. I am delighted that I had the freedom, opportunity, money, and sufficiently good health to go on all the trips, no matter how difficult or strange.
I started this journal in 2002 to document the process of abandoning my home in Portland for what looks easy in retrospect – just a move up the I-5 corridor to a house on top of a hill in Seattle. At the time the decision seemed perilous, risky, extreme.
I didn’t know that a little over a year later I would end up leaving not only the Pacific Northwest but also the country. I had no idea I would end up in England, let alone this rarefied and irritating academic enclave. I did not guess that I had the capacity to spend most of my time recklessly, on the road, or that my domestic arrangements would devolve to include not much more than a boat and a bicycle. I did not understand that I could love an unsettled existence more than the security of home.
When I finished filling out all the fiddly little details I closed the folder and said I want my old life back.