From another part of the forest

This isn’t supposed to be conventional pack-your-bags-and-stay-in-a-hotel-and-see-the-sights-and-eat-the-local-delicacies travel. The travel is of the floundering sort. The passion for it, the lust, is restlessness, dissatisfaction, anxiety. It’s about that bowel movement you know you’re going to have to have once you’re out the door, too far from your own clean, safe bathroom to turn back, too far from whatever public facility will do to feel anything but distress. Wanderlust is a compulsion to go. Flounderlust is the horrible discomfort of needing to go. This isn’t travel. This is exile. This is rattling around in the world, untethered and insecure. This is a dream of skydiving without a chute and not feeling a moment of exhilaration before waking up three feet from hitting the ground. Not a moment of exhilaration because of the bills and the responsibilities and the commitments and the drudgery.