Just keep [Driving], Just keep [Driving]...

This is one of my many realizations that certainly aren't novel, so I'm writing this post as less of preaching a lesson and more of a story of how I arrived at a common realization. (Kind of like this post about identity)

Maybe two months ago, when we were travelling from Williamsport PA to Brentwood TN, I had a look at the map and almost couldn't believe how far we'd gone. The trip would've been 11hrs and 768mi if you drove it straight (in a modern car at modern speeds), but we gave ourselves 12 days to make the journey. Progress had felt slow, but it was indeed progress and all in the same direction. If you counted all the progress we'd made since leaving Maine, we were nearly halfway across the country. Including all the local trips and meandering mileage, we could've driven to California by now. That is, if we'd continued in a straight line. 

Think of the commute. Forth and back, forth and back, everyday. What if you didn't turn around everyday, but you just kept going in the same direction? In one year of even just a 5-mile commute, that's a trip across the entire continental USA.

So what's my point? Well, whatever direction you're heading and whatever your mode of progression, it's amazing how far you can get when you just keep going in the same direction...

I'm not suggesting anyone cross the country 5-miles at a time (even though that's *basically* what Jesse and I are doing now). I'm suggesting you apply that concept of literal, directional travel to other ways you spend time in your life. Whether it's on a hobby, on your relationships or on your physical well-being, imagine you stacked all your effort in a single direction towards a unified outcome. 

I chose this title "Just Keep [Driving], Just Keep [Driving]..." so you could insert whatever mode of progress suits you. If your name were Dory, you'd say "Swimming." As long as it's done in the same direction, just keep doing it. 

This idea got me thinking about the ways in which I spend time heading in *different* directions. Many of these time sinks are things I do sporadically and without much planning. A few simple examples are phone-scrolling, internet obsessions, or even literally walking around directionless looking for something to do. Here are a few more complicated examples of directionful- or directionless-ness:

• Camp setup/ takedown
  We regularly take down camp and set it back up somewhere else in the same day, which I can choose to see as time spent working in exactly the opposite directions. Instead of spending 3 nights at 3 different campsites, you can easily batch that time spent moving into something else if you stay in the same place.
• Physical training (cycling, running, weight lifting, climbing, etc.)
  I won't go into the weeds here as I have alot of history and opinions on the topic of exercise and nutrition planning. Suffice it to say one could be much more fit and effective with a properly organized training plan. That is, training with a direction in mind and moving towards that goal.
• Reading books
  Reading books really forces you to hold the course for an extended period. You can't switch browser tabs or go read another article; the author has created a directional story or topic and you're there for the duration of it. The characters, the topics in previous chapters, all the contextual information: it's cohesive and leading you in the same direction.

Here's a photo for the thumbnail.
We stopped at an overlook in the Smokies to read for a while. 
I was re-reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

Maybe this got you thinking "What *is* direction?" Cool, me too.  

We certainly have a cultural, intuitive understanding of this idea. When someone says "that person really has direction," we have a pretty good idea what they mean. So I won't give you my definition, but I'll leave you with a few more thoughts on how this is relevant to our life currently.

Jesse and I have put increasing thought in this direction (ba-dum-tss) with our current lifestyle, as we really want these few years of "directionless-ness" (as our current cultural narrative might suggest) to move us in the same direction as the rest of our life. If you have a narrow-minded set of goals for your story (e.g. us a few years back), it can be hard to envision spending time moving towards anything but that very particular goal; it may seem like a waste of time. Jesse and I chose to loosen our grip on that narrow set of goals and to redefine our goals with a broader focus in mind. Sometimes we struggle with not moving "towards" a particular goal (career or otherwise) but we remind ourselves that our goals are wider than a career or a singular achievement: we're investing in ourselves as people.

This idea is strongly rooted in the principles and philosophy of Linear Algebra for me. 

I could think of a number of ways to define dimensionality in this regard, but the specifics aren't as relevant as the broad idea: there exists a space of vaguely defined, somewhat arbitrary set of dimensions, whose definitions are somewhat irrelevant to the life-path as such, within which one could proceed along a nearly infinite set of paths over time. Some of these paths, however, are closer to each other in direction and the sum the set of paths you've trodden over your lifetime may either be near-zero or very non-zero, all depending, at least in part, on the path you choose to tread today. 

-Max

P.S.

Corollary: The magnitude and direction of your life-path is largely dependent on how you define your dimensions. In one life-space, a particular life-path may be near-zero or even "negative", but that life-path may look very different when you redefine the life-space, resulting in a life-path of vastly different magnitude and direction.