Thu, May 28, 2020
Read in 3 minutes
From the Philadelphia Hub
I’m getting restless – officially. I had a few plans going into the summer as a master’s student and a research assistant (the research work can be done remotely and the curriculum doesn’t call for summer courses). A few months ago I started applying to internships – which was fruitless, and an effort I quit on the assumption that companies had other worries and initiatives that would take precedent over internship programs. So now I’ll focus on research pertaining to my eventual thesis.
In past summers, I’ve been a pretty nomadic person… a quasi-nomad. In the other seasons, I tend to hunker down… but in the summer, I live out of a duffel bag. I go from the big city inland, to coastal towns, to the mountains for music festivals and camping. I’ve gotten creative with commutes in the middle of the week – try to depend less on my automobile… it’s an obvious luxury during winter commutes. I’d double my commute time to create little adventures using public transit or by walking or riding a scooter. On the weekends, there’s no tellin’ where I would have been…
Red, Yellow and Green… the newest governance strategy: it works on the roads… it works in corporate project tracking… and now it’s getting implemented on the economy of a nation. I’m lucky to have a few options – my parents have a primary and secondary home and they don’t really mind my coming and going. My girlfriend has an apartment in the city and she too doesn’t mind my extended company (I think :) ). I have an apartment in a college town experiencing its off season (experienced it a few months early this year). The camping gear is always in the trunk of the car as well. In addition to considering the location that may be the least and most risky, now there are areas of the country designated as red, yellow, and green – which are meant to be uniform guidelines of business operations and social precautions. To say the least, being a nomad is easier without all this added complexity.
My great grandfather, Camillo, was a carpenter who was the first of his family to trek over to America. What was certain about that decision? When his wife passed away at a young age, he went back to Italy to find another woman to marry and brought her to America to help with his children… and to have children of their own. I don’t think paraphrasing a man’s life can be much shorter than that… maybe he was in a destitute position or maybe he was a risk taker when he made that enormous decision in the middle of his life.
Sometimes I think about Camillo when I make my own life decisions. I think I’ve made some big ones thus far in life. He’d be an interesting person to talk to generally and about this situation. Thinking about this makes me feel a bit more settled as I’m a restless nomad realizing I’ve got to be more contentious of my whereabouts this summer.