The Difficulty of Finding Simple Pleasures

Something I find myself contemplating a lot lately is the slow and simple pursuit of joy across disciplines and slices of life. From driving a quirky old car that’s neither the fastest nor most comfortable way to travel to fishing with a small and light fly rod that’s not particularly effective at catching fish relative to chucking live bait with a simpler bait-casting setup to driving aging surface roads and byways, most everything I enjoy sacrifices efficiency and eschews technological improvement and numerical supremacy in favor of that great intangible—tactile joy.

The smell of oil and physical sensation of a throttle rod directly connects the gas pedal and the engine’s throttle bodies, the sound of a fly reel clicking its way out as a trout makes a run with your fly, the buildings and scenery that stop you dead in your tracks on roads forgotten by time and bypassed by more direct routes—these are the things that give meaning to the hours in our days. Five hours of engaging driving passes faster than a single hour on a straight and wide interstate that’s raised and walled-off from its surroundings. And one wild trout landed through great fly presentation and an engaging fight is more memorable and special than a dozen fish caught with salmon eggs from a recent hatchery release. Backroads and fly rods lose out numerically every single time, but somehow they still fill our souls and stir our dreams. The same could be said for so many pursuits. I don’t know the intricacies of all of your hobbies and favorite things, and you may not be able to relate to the scaleless beauty of trout, to the way rainbows like to tail dance and browns like to swim deep and bury your line beneath rocks and logs while they tug and shake the fly out of their mouths. But perhaps if I talk about what it’s like to stand knee-deep in a freestone river in West Virginia as fall leaves fall one by one and occasionally brush your neck and scare the crap out of you then fill you with whimsy when they swirl by the dozen when the wind gusts, you might be able to understand what’s beautiful about fishing. I’ve never felt so complimented as when people read my writing and say things like, “I hate driving, but your Petrolicious piece made me care about cars.” One such statement led to a simple hour and a half long phone call that gave me a profound wakeup call.

I could be writing about the beauty of riding a bike, about the way different freewheels ratchet loudly or hum smoothly, the stiffness and deft maneuvering of a carbon frame beneath you or the resolute comfort and rigidity that a steel steed offers. The subconscious joy of using your body as a gyroscope to miraculously balance a two-wheeled machine, the very-conscious joy of feeling the wind in your face and covering far more ground than you ever could by foot, but still using the same two legs to do it. There is much beauty in bicycles. But lately, there is also much darkness. A few weeks ago, I fell off my bike again on what was arguably the most enjoyable ride I’d been on since the day I was hit by a car, if not even before that. I broke my scaphoid (the deep hand bone between the thumb and palm), I dug some of the deepest flesh wounds I’ve ever had in my elbow and my hip. I was in searing physical pain, but I also experienced something much, much worse.

Falling hard and fast off your bike always results in some degree of brain-jarring. Humans aren’t made to be that far off the ground or moving that fast. And yet, we do it and that’s part of why it feels so amazing. But it’s also why the consequences can be so devastating, especially when, say, your brain is still swollen and jarred from intense trauma four months prior. I laid on my back on the ground, covering my eyes and sobbing. Physical pain hasn’t made me cry since I was a child. As we grow older, the hurt inflicted by bruises and breaks pales in comparison to the psychological damage we all endure if we make it long enough. And so, the combination of flying both attached to and separated from a bike and the jarring impact my neck and brain endured was enough to trigger duct-drying amounts of sobbing.

It was also enough to set me back substantially in my healing process, to ratchet the severity of my ceaseless headaches back to an 8 or 9 instead of a 5 or 6, to bring the brain fog and depression back to the literal forefront. And it’s further complicated my relationship with bikes, one of my most pure and profound passions that’s slowly been tainted by a culture that’s often demoralizing and now repeat injuries that make life difficult to enjoy. Living without bikes also makes it difficult to enjoy. I find myself relating frequently to football players that the general public write off as insane for returning to the field after concussions, and to Cam Newton, one of my all-time favorite athletes, who recently said that repeat malicious hits have made football “not even fun anymore.”

Back to that phone call. Someone read my Petrolicious article and sent it to their friend, who emailed Petrolicious asking how to get in touch with me. She isn’t into cars at all, but found my story eerily relatable. She’d been hit by a car while crossing the street over a year ago and dealt a traumatic brain injury. She also returned to work after two weeks but found it impossible to get her feet back under her, feel fully rested, keep up with work or with life in general. She took time off from work and came back. It never quite worked, and finally she quit and went on a trip similar to mine. Where the simple and beautiful and unknown were reason enough to climb out of bed, where the nauseating agitators like stress and computer screens and being perennially misunderstood were faraway. It was all painfully and also comfortingly familiar.

And when her story reached the present tense, it sounded much like mine. Back in the same city as before, surrounded by the same things, and resuming a job that was never quite fulfilling. After being given a very literal new lease on life, it feels, as she called it, “Like a giant middle finger to the universe.” To survive a near-death experience and countless months of mental anguish only to return to the same rut of mediocrity is indeed like flipping the bird at the one who created birds.

The next day, I got coffee with an acquaintance who’d been following my recent travels and writing with some interest. He wanted to buy me a coffee and hear some stories, but instead he bought me a coffee and we engaged in nearly three hours of lively and thought-provoking conversation. What had been inevitable for ages, since well before the most recent prodding, finally came to the surface. Combined with the return of debilitating side effects, I neither can nor should write another article about digital mailing logistics or high-tech projectors.

I have to get well, medically-speaking, and I have to figure out how to find joy again. It’s been drained from bikes, it’s still alive and well in rivers and on roads, though I’m unfit to go seek either for now. In an impulsive moment characteristic of someone with intense post-concussion syndrome, I decided to make a Facebook status as a bit of a social experiment.
If this status gets 100 likes by 5 PM, I’ll quit my job today.

It got that many likes and then some. A lot more. I received encouraging texts and comments. And so, I did quit. Literally speaking, after this second fall, I can’t successfully execute the tasks required. And metaphorically speaking, I literally can’t even.

After being hit by that Nissan, the second time I collapsed I was certain I was dying. Obviously, I didn’t. And after the major wooziness subsided, I began to follow my passions to a degree as onlookers celebrated the adventure and YOLO-ness of it all. And yet, I missed out on writing time and many more sights and opportunities because I continued working the whole time. The money is nice to have, but I haven’t been able to buy my way out of the creeping fog and darkness this head injury is causing. Money can buy the costumes required to participate in the insular microcultures of Austin, but it can’t buy bullshit-busting authenticity. It can buy coffee or beer or a veggie burger, but it can’t buy sincereity on the other side of the table.