DRD4-7r.

About a year ago I settled on the word restless. This is the word I am okay with when I have to explain to people what the hell the deal has been with my life. Most people are far too polite to ask specific things like, “What happened with that marriage you were in?” or “So I hear that you don’t sleep in a bed because your ex-girlfriend broke your heart so bad that you’re essentially the emotional equivalent of Jason Bourne”, but even though they don’t specifically ask those things, those are usually the things they’re asking, though usually for sport and not out of a sense of concern.

So “restless” is the word I have found which feels both honest and yet somehow still obtuse enough that it allows me to not have to talk about those things … you know those things … they happen inside your body and make you feel the … what do you call them? The feels. No one likes those.

“Restless” gets me off the hook without my having to be dishonest.

And it is such a dynamic word. I’m surprised presidential campaign propaganda is not all over this word yet: Vote for So-and-So, the Restless Patriot: Spreading Justice and Freedom and Truth Sunlight to All the Corners of the World Not Yet Reachable by Disney Cruise Lines.

Obviously that is a hyperbolic example.

A few months ago, right around Christmas, I had drinks with a friend of mine in the East Village of Manhattan. It was a fancy as fuck little tiny bar that made its own bitters. He’s a student at Columbia Law and also one of the finest readers of poetry I have ever met and we talked about life and such and he asked why I’m doing this teacher-training thing that I am doing as part of my MA and I was more honest than I usually am and I said that I simply enjoyed the teaching thing in a way I never expected to, but also, that that wasn’t it all on its own. I'm not one of those selfless adjunct professor types who is simply drawn like sailors to the rocks by the Sirens of TEACHING. I told him that I find something appealing about the idea of having 100% portable credentials; I can get a job down the street or in Arizona or Portland or Texas or West Virginia. I told him that I liked the idea that I could go teach in Colorado for a couple of years and then decide not to anymore. I told him that the restless part of me likes the idea of living a semester at a time.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t have big-picture goals and don’t want commitment, that I don’t want kids and a home that isn’t floating a foot off the ground, but I was being oddly honest that day (it was kind of drizzly and wet weather always makes me feel closer to myself) and so I think I used this word “restless” numerous times.

It is one of those words that is both solid and simultaneously empty. It is a great container. If I tell you that I am restless then you are immediately willing to pack up the Subaru Outback of my soul with your own problems/desires/fantasies/fears/wants/hopes and then you give me a pass because the thing I just said ceases to be about me and becomes about you. This is why women in relationships find me, on average, 7,000% more attractive than women who are single (which is half the reason I don’t date.); I am, and can be, whatever.

That isn’t me being coy, BTW, I really am frequently what-the-fuck-ever.

For years now I have felt like that one montage scene in Legends of the Fall when Brad Pitt is wondering lovelornly around the globe doing things that don't even make sense (I think he kills a rhinoceros at one point), though I promise you this is the only time I will ever compare myself to Brad Pitt.

“Restless” buys me all of the things I have said so far. It is a word that most people will let slide by. Ironically it is a word like “love” or “sad” or “hungry” in that people acknowledge it on the level of a base emotion which does not require additional explanation.

This is not to say that my restlessness is a manipulation, because I assure you that it is not. You’re frankly lucky that I’m not one of those people with a world map tacked onto a bulletin board with color-coded thumb tacks indicating which continent I went to on which trip, or even one of those people with a globe tattooed on their back (though I have seen some of those skinny lithe backs and they aren't always bad, with that ink circle up between the shoulder blades and its circumference altered by the tensing of shoulder blades), I would enjoy being one of those people very much, but I am already halfway through my thirties and I am also ambivalent about patchouli. So permanent-globe-trotting-backpacker is probably not in my future. However, I AM going to hike the Camino de Santiago in France/Spain, that is just a thing that will happen, be assured of that. I may even wear the patchouli for that one.

This whole thinking on the word restless is because I read this article: The Wanderlust Gene: Why Some People Are Born To Travel, which seems to posit that there is a “wanderlust gene” called DRD4-7r, which I do not believe for one single second, but that word “wanderlust” is pretty good too, isn’t it? And it — like “restless” — can be used to explain away all manner of sins. I am always inclined to think that I have this Wanderlust Virus everyone Pintersts about, but I don’t travel widely enough to get it tattooed between the sharp edges of my shoulder blades. That’s just a function of money though. If you would like to loan me your Black Amex card, I will be in Morocco tomorrow with the Mercator Map inked into my very own flesh.

A few months ago one of the “travel” blogs I read (i.e. : written by an attractive young person with the money to pay for plane tickets) linked to the video below. I am posting it not because I think that it is good or bad, but simply because I am both the girl described in the video and also, somehow, the guy who the video is waving off. Also, please note how great the song is (Seriously, watch the video and then watch it again just to listen to the remix).

(Hey, isn’t it funny how this post about restlessness didn’t answer any of the questions it raised and then ultimately misdirected you toward a video with a great song and cool girls in small black bikinis?)

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