I got the chance to go on a weekend-long camping trip a few weeks ago with my brother, Jonathan. Along with many other things, one of the topics that often came up with a sense of vigor, paralleled only by fans of Nascar talking about Dale Earnhardt, was the glory that is: Hot Sauce. More specifically, Texas Pete.

Jonathan adds Texas Pete to everything…pizza, eggs, chicken, sandwiches, cereal, beer…you name it, and the Pete is right there on it.

I’ve often been perplexed by this behavior. While I find hot sauce to be a mystically delicious element essential to the Earth’s being, I never found it necessary to add to everything and certainly never envisioned caching a full bottle, or even half a bottle.

On this trip, like the essence of water, Texas Pete has become a thing of necessity. It doesn’t need cold storage and, as Alexi noted last night, it has the right balance of salt, pepper and vinegar to add a never-overpowering flavor to just about anything.

As we were finishing up our amazingly delicious burritos, made with left over cow’s arse, I noticed that the bottle of Texas Pete was almost gone…after only two weeks of making use of it.

At first I wanted to cry since we were almost out. In fact, I’ll even admit it…I shed a tear.

But then I realized the inherent cosmic glory that radiated from the situation - not unlike how a golden God beams its energy over the land of its people - and was, again, at peace.

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I’ve been riding my bike in and out of traffic all through Boston for a lot of this afternoon. I have to say that this city feels really, really good. There’s something about it, its charm, character, feel, whatever you want to call it, that I really like.

This park, for example, juxtaposes the nature of its ancient willows with the horizon of a just-big-enough modern city showcasing the John Hancock building. It seems like this is what New York City’s Central Park might have felt like at one time before it became tainted with a name.

It’s clean, but not too clean like a hospital or the city I grew up in. It feels safe, but vulnerable. There is a sense of wisdom here.

Or maybe it’s just the fresh New England air.

Either way, it is because of these moments that I recently discovered my love for travel.

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If you’re anything like me, you keep constant tabs on your cell phone. It’s your leash. Your connection to others who are so very important to you. Regardless of how often you actually answer it, etc, and like with checking your email, you’re obsessive compulsive about seeing if anyone called.

I’ve been looking at this trip to push a lot of my boundaries…something to use in order to force myself to redefine various realms, definitions, and characteristics of comfort.

On this trip, one of those ways is through my personal connectivity. I want to know what it’s like to free my mental time and space for things other than checking my cell phone or worrying about if I’m connected or not.

Now, I don’t have a choice. It’s not convenient for me or others, but I won’t know how truly valuable that convenience is until I remove it from the equation.

By destroying my cell phone, I’ve made myself virtually unreachable and unable to reach others when I may need to do so. I have backups, such as using Skype through my cellular internet card, but it’s far from convenient or luxurious.

By trashing my cell phone and getting a Skype phone, not only do I reduce my personal and business operating costs from over $80/month to $6 per month. This $6 gets me unlimited call time to any land line in the United States. I can call any other Skype user in the world for free. For an additional $3 per month, I can place unlimited calls to land lines in an additional 28 countries.

I can do all of this…so long as I’m within range of an accessible WiFi network.

From many perspectives, this makes sense.

From many other perspectives, it doesn’t.

And that’s what I’m about to find out.

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Trying to explain this road trip idea to people has forced me to do what a lot of people that struggle to justify their actions do: make up new words. My word is “lifecation,” add it to your spell check because it’s going to be hot.

So what is a lifecation? As you probably surmised it’s a combination of normal life and a vacation, although the formal definition hasn’t been officially penned yet. What I can tell you is that a lifecation is a lifestyle in which you aren’t tied to locations. You get to go where you want, when you want, to see the people and places that usually are too inconvenient for a sedentary lifestyle. It sounds all fancy-free, like a vacation, but you don’t get to escape your responsibilities as those would allow. You still have to take your calls, get your mail, and produce an income because lifecations are a full-time lifestyle and need to be sustainable.

You don’t need to live in a van or drive around the US, you just need to give up a set of assumed constraints on your lifestyle. What those are, and how you can successfully keep your life in order while lifecationing, will be explored as we continue our very own!

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There’s an article on MSN today about how to take a year off of work. It does a decent job of outlining considerations to make in preparation financially as well as work-wise. They discuss how to prepare and/or tap into savings, statistics about paid/unpaid leaves of absense, and even options for cool seasonal jobs to help ease the financial burden.

While I’ve never taken a year off from work, I’ve been consulting since last November and have had times when I’ve been less busy than others. That said, I have to disagree with the idea of taking a year off from work, even if it’s just me who disagress with the idea.

There comes a point where lacking productivity becomes a burden in its own right. The combination of purposelessness, uncertainty, lack of contribution to something beyond yourself, and boredom all come together and at times can be quite difficult to deal with. Sure, it sounds great to take a year off from work, but the reality is that unless you’ve been working 80+ hours a week for several years, you probably don’t need a year to do nothing.

Here’s the caveat: If you’re going to take a year off from work, still do something. If you’ve wondered why this road trip is happening, this should give you a bit of insight.

If you’re going to take an extended time off from work, find something else to throw yourself into. Chances are that it’s not work that you don’t like, it’s that you’re busting your butt toward something that you either don’t, or no longer, care about. So, find something you really care about, or find something that you think would be remarkably fun and amazing, and do it all the way.

Ben

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