Choices Make Work

Thoughts on the burden of freedom

On Thursday I took a day trip down to Southern Maryland, a neat agricultural part of the state southeast of Washington, D.C. and across from the Eastern Shore. It was really interesting, and, of course, I’ll be writing about it.

In fact, I really should be doing a lot more of these little day trips. Northern Virginia is within two hours of so much: Pennsylvania Amish Country, the Eastern Shore, the Shenandoah Valley, and a lot of other places I’ve not even begun to explore.

Just about three years ago—right before the pandemic, literally a couple of weeks before lockdown began—I said to my wife, “I think I’m going to start spending more days out on the road seeing stuff and writing about it.” I had actually been working from home several months at that point, at my old magazine job, and despite having gotten out of the drudgery of my commute and office routine, I still found it hard to get myself out of the house. Now that I’m self-employed and this is literally what I do, I still kind of find it hard.