Month: June 2023

I’ve spent this week in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s not as hot here as it was in Texas, especially in the evenings, due to the altitude. The weather has also been calmer than on my drive through west Texas—hailstorms do not make for a pleasant driving experience. The architecture in old Santa Fe is dictated to be the adobe style that is emblematic of the Southwest. I’ll never live in a place with that architecture but there is something pleasing about the consistency of the city’s buildings. Much of the food here is too spicy for my liking. Any level of spicy is too spicy for my liking. I’ve managed to navigate that reasonably well.

Taos was lackluster, its pueblo too obvious of a cash grab for what a visit entailed. The High Road to Taos, though, was the prettiest stretch of road so far on this extended road trip. A great deal of the drive is through juniper forests, but there are also a few vistas from which the bleak expanse of the high country of Northern New Mexico stretches far off towards mountains in the distance. The contrast from last week’s drive is stark.

This week has also been different as I’ve been joined by my parents for this portion of my journey. This has meant a different flow to the day, more time spent during meals, and a few activities that I might have otherwise skipped. I probably still would have visited the Georgia O’Keefe Museum as we did today, but I might have walked in fewer of the art galleries in the city than I have as a result of being with other people. Tradeoffs.

I had an unexpected car commute this morning. I haven’t had a regular car commute since I drove up and down I-75 during my clerkship, a drive that was longer than I would’ve chosen but one that was never stressful. In DC I didn’t even have a car and commuted on the metro. Then once I moved to North Carolina I worked from home so I only faced rush hour traffic by accident when I’d forget what time it was when running an errand.

This morning’s drive was awful. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Head on a swivel. It was a nice reminder that I want no part of a stressful or lengthy commute. Working from home brings its own challenges—isolation, stir craziness, and difficulty in ending the workday. I think Cal Newport’s construct of working from near home is the ideal. Something like a calm 10-15 minutes, just enough time to allow a mental shift. I’ll still have a home office too, but having somewhere else to go, a workspace that isn’t part of my living space, is a priority after my experience the past few years.

For now I’m on a massive road trip so working and living spaces keep changing and intermixing. This is a post with an eye on the future. Has anyone else adopted a work-from-near-home approach, whether by moving for a shorter commute or moving work out of the house, and discovered positives or negatives that I should consider? Responses welcome.

Live entertainment was the theme this week. I attended two shows, one a honky-tonk style country show and the other a comedy open mic.

The country show was a Friday night affair that bled into the early hours of Saturday. I would have preferred it if the opening act had started before 10 and the headliner before 11:30, but I’m not the one who books such things. If the goal was to wait until the heat had fully subsided, then that was a failure. That only takes place in the early morning hours from now until deep into September in this part of Texas. There were several options throughout the city, but I satisficed with a quick listen on Spotify to make my selection.

The opening act (Leon Majcen) was more enjoyable with his deeper folk sound. I didn’t know any of the lyrics coming in, but he didn’t have a band behind him and so it was just him, his guitar, and his harmonica. I like simple when it comes to live music. The main act (Calder Allen) had a full band and was more rock and roll with a Texas western tinge. I didn’t know the words to his songs either but there were definitely people in the bar who did. I just sat on a barstool and let the music wash over me for a few hours, earplugs in place to take the edge off.

The comedy show was easier to select. I wanted to see a show at Joe Rogan’s new comedy club so I looked to see what show I could attend and only the open mic had tickets available. I trekked over to the craziest part of Sixth Street and watched a rapid fire of comedians on Monday night. A few of them were onto something; most need a lot more work. The staccato of the open mic was followed by more extended sets from those who work as doormen at the club, a job that requires auditioning. A few of them bombed too, but the hit rate was much higher and a few of them were downright hilarious. Comedy is a tough industry. Music is too. I do respect them all for trying. And I’ll keep trying to expose myself to new things as this American sojourn continues.

My personal tour of America has moved into its next phase. I got what I needed from my time in Nashville, even if the result wasn’t perhaps what I’d hoped going into my extended stay. I’ll spend the next couple of weeks in and around Austin, a city where I spent a summer in law school interning in the state solicitor general’s office.

As part of a reorientation drive on my first night, I drove north along Congress Avenue. That is probably the most iconic Austin vantage, with the state capitol building center framed and the city skyline in the middle distance with the river in the foreground. What struck me most was how different it was compared to my memory of it. The image in my mind had the river and the capitol building, sure, and a couple of skyscrapers—the most memorable being roughly shaped like an owl. There were a lot of cranes at that time, more cranes that I’ve ever seen in the United States. Now, there are fewer cranes and all of those buildings that were under construction almost a decade ago are completed. Austin today has a true skyline that extends east to west along the riverfront and stretches northward. The owl tower doesn’t stand out near as much, and Austin already feels than I remember. I expected that, but the visual made the pandemic-era statistics real.

During this stay I get to explore what the city is like now, how it’s changed, what’s the same, and where things might be headed. Dinner last night reminded me of one thing that’s not changed, namely that food doesn’t have to be described as spicy on the menu for it to cause me some problems. Just Texas things.