For today’s post I answer a question responsible for approximately 39,000 sleepless nights over the past eight months. It’s been the dominating topic of conversation at every American holiday gathering, and even some Zambian celebrations. It’s also been the third most searched topic over the past eight months, according to Google Analytics.
“What in the world has Jason Mathes been doing with his life since February, when he quit his job to travel the world shortly before the COVID pandemic shut down world travel, making his dreams completely and utterly unattainable?” – Everybody
It’s no surprise that families have been putting their lives on hold while waiting for answers to this life-altering question. Family vacations have been postponed, magazine subscriptions cancelled, and Charlie the family cat is even being forced to eat dry food instead of the high-class wet food he’s grown accustomed to.
None of these issues have to do with a global pandemic, almost constant rioting across the country, an upcoming election that’s dividing the country even further, or questions about the economy. Nope.
It all has to do with the uncertainty around my dream chasing and general day-to-day life.
Since I’m now a viral social media star (I have 133 followers on Instagram, 11 subscribers on Youtube, and 26 people read my last blog post about Teddy Roosevelt and a dead seal – truly massive numbers) it’s my responsibility to provide a glimpse into the last eight months of a famous world traveler’s life, which included almost no world travel.
It all started at the end of February. My last day of work was on a Friday, and a couple days later my parents and I boarded a plane to San Jose, Costa Rica.
We spent a week visiting my cousin Kim and her husband Alex, dining on casados, ziplining, playing fetch with a jungle dog named Lucy, and befriending a group of Mexican nuns at Volcan Irazu.
(I’ll write in more detail about Costa Rica soon, but I’m keeping it brief for this post.)
A few days after returning from Costa Rica I packed up my Toyota Corolla and headed west to start the solo portion of my journey. I spent a day in Denver before continuing further west to the great state of Utah, where I spent almost three weeks hiking and camping at various national parks (Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Bryce Canyon).
Before I knew it I was already almost a month into my crazy adventure. Everything had been going according to plan, and I was having a great time, but all along COVID kept picking up steam in the background.
There was a two day stretch when I was hiking at Capitol Reef National Park that my cell service was very spotty, and I didn’t have any WiFi. It was a great couple days; I always enjoy being able to unplug like that.
But it took an unfortunate turn when I checked into a hotel due to some bad weather. I turned on the TV and found out that international travel was coming to a halt, the NBA season was suspended, and certain states were starting to institute lockdowns.
I could tell that this was coming for a week or so, but it was still a definite “oh shit” moment for me. It turned out I picked a pretty horrible time to sacrifice a stabile job and income to chase an expensive dream.
My plan after returning from Utah was to spend a couple weeks preparing for my next trip. The Trip. The next one was going to be the real deal. It wasn’t going to be one week in a foreign country with my parents and a family-member-turned-local, and it wasn’t going to be a few-week road trip in the United States.
I was going to buy a one-way plane ticket to Belize City, Belize. That was supposed to be the start of two months backpacking through Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
I’d built up an Excel spreadsheet into an impressive itinerary, but I obviously didn’t get to use it (not yet at least).
So what did I do when I had to put my dreams on hold for an unknown period of time? I did what anybody would do…I turned myself into a beast on the lawnmower, watched a terrifying amount of Survivor re-runs, and I led the Eastern Michigan Eagles to multiple college football championships on NCAA 2012.
Those were basically the highlights of my April, May, and June. It was ugly.
Instead of being honest with myself and admitting how badly I wasted the most free time I’ve had since high school, I’m instead going to use sarcasm to brag about how much Survivor I watched.
Let’s just say that in the course of a couple months, I witnessed all of the following:
- Richard Hatch become the “true survivor”
- Mike Skupin burning all the skin off his hands
- Clarence getting caught eating the beans
- Kathy peeing on John’s hands
- Robb going absolutely batshit crazy in challenges
- Butch being obsessed with collecting firewood and then everything burning down because there was too much firewood
- Fairplay lying about his grandma being dead
- Rupert constructing the worst shelter in Survivor history
- Chris showing the women his heart and then absolutely crushing their hearts
- Tom bullying Ian into stepping off the buoy
- Judd going off at every tribal council
- Shane being Shane every episode
- Ozzy being one of the most fun Survivors ever
- Alex, Edgardo, and Mookie getting stunned by the immunity idol
- Amanda’s zombie eyes (part 1)
- HD episodes, Amanda’s zombie eyes (part 2), and Ozzy being one of the least fun Survivors ever
God bless anyone that gets those references.
Finally when the Survivor re-runs went from standard definition to high definition I knew traveling wasn’t going to be an option anytime soon, and I very badly needed to stop being a bum.
I had recently taken a week-long trip up to the U.P., which included a day trip to Mackinac Island. I thought it seemed like a pretty cool place to spend a summer, so on July 3rd, I moved to Mackinac Island, Michigan.
I spent the next 3.5 months working as a dockporter for one of the island’s resorts, and it was a very interesting time. As with Costa Rica, I’ll be writing about the experience in more detail in the coming months.
So that’s a quick snapshot at how much of a fail this whole experiment has been so far. Instead of traveling indefinitely, I traveled for one month, wasted away almost three months, and then worked for almost four months. Honestly though, I’m actually taking this whole thing in stride because I’ve still been able to accomplish some of the goals I set for myself back in February. It hasn’t been exactly as I envisioned, but I’m still happy for making the decision I did.
So now what’s in store for me? Traveling still doesn’t seem like a viable option, so barring any further COVID setbacks, I’ll be working in Colorado for the winter season.
I’ve never gone skiing or snowboarding, so I’m hoping to document my rise from loser boy to professional gnar shredder. Hopefully I don’t break any bones in between (although it would make a better storyline if I broke an arm or two – we’ll see how desperate I get).