This year feels as if it might be worth dedicating to being antsy rather than angsty, possibly because it’s only January and the twelvemonth sprawling before me still seems filled with the buds, rather than the cindered remains, of possibility. Beats me why, especially since decade upon decade of evidence suggests that this optimism is a recurring mass delusion, but I think it’s going to be a good year. As I look out at the sunny horizon of 2010 I surprise myself by actually wanting to make and keep this resolution: Every day (or, just to nod at the inevitable slippery slope, five times a week) I’d like to do at least one thing that I’ve never done before.
So far, no good; and even if I had, I’ve rarely been able to keep faith with anything beyond the first week of any January in my life. But the thought should count for something.
Here’s one thing I’ve never done that I’ve always wanted to do: vanish from the face of my usual life. Sink without a giveaway ripple. Disappear without a trace and start all over again, living in a different context, entirely anonymously. Herding goats in Bolivia, or being an optometrist in Papua New Guinea, completely inaccessible to anyone I know except telemarketing people. (Nobody can escape them. Nobody.)
Sometimes I’m so eager for a change that I’d be willing to travel anywhere, and put up with any degree of discomfort, just to feel that addictive open road feeling. How much fun would it be to do that without being accountable to a single soul? But I wonder how long I’d last before I started aching for the people and the stupid little things of my real life.
The other day I read a Wired magazine story about a reporter named Evan Ratliff who did the same thing in the form of a good journalistic public dare: He would attempt to vanish from his real life for a month — leave town, snap contact with friends and family, change his name and appearance and electronic id — but without actually living a substantially different life. He wouldn’t just hook off to a log cabin with sackfuls of dried fruit; he’d remain in the US, in cities, online, on social networking sites, even logging the odd banking transaction or telephone call from his real life IDs to give people something to work with — and the readers of Wired were invited to hunt him, find him before September 15, take his picture and say the password (“fluke”) for a reward of $5,000.
Smart young kids being what they are around computers and software and IP addresses and triangulation, Ratliff was found in 25 days, a mere week before the deadline expired — which made him extremely grumpy because $3,000 of the prize money came out of his own pocket — but he had a good three weeks on the lam. However — and this is the point I like to remind myself of — he wrote: “I’d discovered how quickly the vision of total reinvention can dissolve into its lonely, mundane reality. Whatever reason you might have for discarding your old self and the people who went with it, you’ll need more than a made-up backstory and a belt full of cash to replace them.”
So maybe 2010 will be my year for appreciating the things in my life rather than wanting to run a continent or two away from them. This is very likely hogwash, but it’s the first time in a long while that I actually feel like trying. If I fail, I’ll write this column from Bolivia while the goats are grazing.
[The author is a freelance writer and editor]
