It’s hot and it’s dry and the wind is blowing, hard. On summer days like this, the Great American Southwest feels like God’s own hairdryer. No place feels quite right and nobody really suits me and the one person I most want to be with isn’t available. My eyes are on the horizon and my mind is close behind; my heart can’t find its purpose and my soul’s been left behind. The weather is only part of the equation. I have to admit it, at least to myself (and now to you): I’m restless.

Much to Do About Nothing

It’s an itch you can’t scratch; a mind worm that causes everything to distract you from everything else. It feels like a song you can’t get out of your head, but you can’t remember the words. Or the music. All that remains is the persistent but vague notion that you have forgotten to do something important.

Jitteriness without the caffeine, an indefinable anxiety with no discernible trigger. You can’t really pin it down. It’s like that tiny piece of eggshell in the eggs; when you try to put your finger on it, it is somewhere else.

For me, restlessness builds over time until it reaches its tempestuous peak, which can then last for months or years. When it gets to this stage, I feel a definite pressure to go somewhere else, do something else, be with someone new. But I haven’t a clue about where or what or with whom.

And restlessness demands a hefty price, a pound of not only flesh but also heart and soul, blood and tears.

Productivity drops to zero and sleep damn near the same. Hobbies and avocations lose their allure and work becomes just that. Even eating begins to feel like a chore. Restlessness is a very efficient means of weight loss that I recommend to no one.

I know all the fancy terms and have made all the fancy diagnoses: this is not an “agitated depression,” nor is it “generalized anxiety disorder,” nor any other such attempt to pathologize it with a DSM code.

Restlessness is beyond the reach of therapy and gabapentin and benzodiazepines. I suspect it is an ancient and supremely powerful instinct, a holdover from a time when we were nomadic and tribe-based as a matter of survival. It is a genie that commands, “Come with me if you want to live,” held in a brass lamp of DNA or the Akashic records or the collective unconscious.

I know people who are blessed with an immunity to restlessness. They do the same job for 40 years, have the same friends since high school and live in the same town in which they will one day be buried. They are content, solid, salt-of-the-earth folk and life is surely better with them as friends and neighbors. For them, restlessness really is “no thing.”

I am not one of those people.

The Call of the Road

I have been here before. When a global pandemic was announced, for instance, and the world became isolated and threatening and devoid of human contact, I took one of the two actions that has always helped me chart a course out of trouble. I rented a car and drove over 30,000 miles through 13 States.

For four months, I drove - sometimes 12 or 13 hours a day - until the restlessness subsided. Or was at least tolerable. From early summer through early fall, I rekindled the supreme meditation that is watching the world roll by with only the sound of the road for company. No music, no talk radio, no podcasts, just me and my thoughts and a day’s worth of scenery, day after day.

It’s not a matter of driving to escape the feelings, the stuck-ness. It’s more the creation of a sacred space in which emotions and thoughts can coalesce into manageable patterns and levels of intensity.

The process is to try not to create any particular train of thought. At first, anyway. Just become aware of the feelings and thoughts that flow through your mind. Stay with them and don’t allow yourself to become distracted. As you examine them, they will begin to organize themselves into themes. If you pay attention long enough, these threads of consciousness will evolve into coherent questions and directions.

The second phase of the process is to capture these threads of thought and feeling. Some will be brutally simple. Some will require many pages of journaling (or minutes of recording) to fully understand their message. Later, as you write out these themes in an attempt to clarify them, you will begin to understand the primary challenges for this stage of your life and for your current situation.

Some of these revelations will come in the form of statements:

I need a new physical location, because…
It’s time for a new career, so I should…
I need to reconcile my relationship with…

Some will come as questions:

Why do I always choose someone who…?
Am I just doing the thing I’m most comfortable with/pays the most?
What do I really want at this stage of my life?

And perhaps the most important of all:

What, really, is my purpose? and How will I know? and How do I pursue it?

Each statement or question will trigger further opportunities for reflection. This is why long drives are the perfect vehicle (pun intended) for this work. The introspective lack of distractions, coupled with the focus needed to stay on the road, provides a space in which you can discover and explore the motivations and fears that currently define you.

Amazing Grace

There is a second action, inexorably connected (in my mind, at least) with the art of the long drive.

When I drive, part of my time is spent capturing music that comes to me. Most of the time the music is in the form of a song, usually small snippets. I have had entire works come to me fully formed and almost too fast to capture. These musical questions and answers are normally tied to the emotional content of my musings, topics that do not lend themselves easily to linear thought.

I wrote a song (the first of many) that came out of a period of restlessness, well before masks and vaccines and virus scares. While the circumstances differ, the song remains the same: “How can I use the discomfort of restlessness to reform a positive direction for my life?”

The chorus goes like this:

Took a midnight ride
Down this windin’ road
Trying to decide
Where this highway goes…¹

As a musician and songwriter, this is a serendipitous bonus of the process of dealing with restlessness. If you are a creative type, you may find your art similarly engaged. If you are not particularly creative, the more linear process of capturing and then journaling may be all you need.

Restless

So restlessness - uncomfortable though it may be - is frequently a motivator for a new and more relevant phase of your life. At any rate, it deserves your complete attention and serious contemplation.

I hope my processes are of use to you, or that you find your own. In either case, good journey!

I think I’ll go for a drive. And maybe write a song or two.

1. Midnight Ride © Jeffrey W Welsh, all rights reserved.



I am a creator (musician, writer, live-streamer and podcaster), entrepreneur, educator and counselor.



To learn more about how to use these concepts or to inquire about working with me, you can contact me through my website, the comments section on my Substack or Medium accounts or The Authentic Life Blog page. If you have found value in this article, follow my Instagram account for daily insights, or my X account for occasional tweets. To support this community, you can Buy Me A Coffee or donate through my Patreon account.

- JWW