I am an introvert, and I like to travel.  I also have anxiety, though, so those first two traits don’t always go together as well as you might like.

I also like to go for walks (less scary).  As a happy traveling/walking introvert, I was once asked by a friend of mine who is not an introvert what did I do while I was walking.  She was baffled at how I would sometimes walk the two miles from campus to my apartment by myself, all alone.  ‘Do you…think?’ she asked.*

Yep.  I think while I walk.  Also while I’m driving.  In fact, I think a little bit too easily.  It’s not safe for me to put on music or the radio while I’m driving…or to try to hold much of a conversation with a passenger.  My daughters have resigned themselves to the cruel and ruthless fact that there will be no music if I am the one driving them somewhere.

The exception is long-distance driving, on a long stretch of highway, with my husband in the passenger seat acting as a backup navigator/driver.  If I’m by myself, nope.  No music.  No audio book.

I once read an article about multiple-personality-disorder that said it’s a form of dissociation, very similar to snapping back to attentiveness when you realize you’ve been mentally drifting while driving.  Based on that, I think it may be accurate to say that I am the sort of person who readily dissociates from my physical surroundings if I don’t watch it.  And, I do not need music or an audio book to keep me occupied.

Once, I drove solo the eight hours from Denver to Salt Lake in complete silence.  I had a lovely time.  I was definitely thinking.  But not necessarily productive thinking.  As a writer, you might think I was using that time to write or compose elements for a project I was working on.  No.  I was looking at the road and the mountains.  I like roads and mountains.  And honestly, it’s not really safe to get lost in a story while I’m driving, even if it’s mine. 

(Which is the flip side of another interesting thing I’ve discovered recently: To really be able to write, especially stories, I need to feel safe – safe enough, really, to leave my body and go elsewhere.)

I will admit, though, that I did compose this blog post while driving home from work.  That was maybe a little bit dangerous of me.  Though not as bad as it could have been.  Thinking about driving while driving is less dangerous than getting wrapped up in the emotional tangles of a character who really wants to be an assassin, if only she could locate a willing assassin teacher! or in trying to really see what an illusion-generated garden on the Moon would look like.  Also, maybe it’s better to compose driving dissertations than to let some nifty detail I spot along the side of the world road pull me into a totally unrelated daydream.

So, now you know part of why I don’t like driving, even though I really, really like roads and mountains.  Also one reason why I really like walking: All those nifty details, up close, at a speed that’s safe enough I can go explore them.

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* I associate this conversation with an orange tree I could see behind a wall of one of the gardens I would pass on this walk.  An orange tree outside in Colorado does not make sense – but I still love the image of it there, even if I’ve made it up.