Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/859762
34 wholelifetimes.com backwords FINDING HOME FINDING HOME S omething felt off in my life. You know that feeling of loneliness you feel even when you're surrounded by a sea of friends and within the comfort of a companion? It's the deepest form of loneliness because it appears, at fi rst, as if there is no cure. Or at least so it feels at that moment, and those moments are scary moments. I was having one of those moments as I sat on a park bench outside of Trails Cafe in Griffi th Park listening to a Tony Rob- bins audiobook, Awaken the Giant Within. That feeling in the soul of my gut was a heavy one on that spring afternoon. In Los Angeles the weather is always perfect, the faces on the people seem perfect, the cars are pristine, even the cruddy sidewalks have been tread upon by the most idolized humans to walk the Earth, which was an- other sad notion: Why should I idolize someone that I don't know? Why does this town revolve around validation? Well, at least those were my thoughts on that particular day. I knew I was dissatisfi ed with my life because I always listen to an audiobook when I crave change. It felt like I had lost all sense of adventure and was unsure how to get it back. For someone like my- self, who grew up hitchhiking the coun- try and sleeping on park benches only to build myself outta the concrete with massive movement, a feeling like that can be deadly. "ARE YOU LIVING UP TO YOUR FULLEST POTENTIAL?!" Tony asked me. I shook my head as I said, "I don't know Tony…" "WELL, WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE IF YOU WERE LIV- ING UP TO YOUR FULL POTENTIAL!?" Of course that conversation happened in my head, through my headphones, and those weren't his exact words, but it was some- thing like that. My mind went racy, I just didn't know. I didn't know what 'living up to my fullest potential' looked like. The audiobook was almost over and still I hadn't fi gured out my life… I was get- ting nervous. But then it called for a writing exercise. The exercise instructed me to write down, uninhibited, all the possibilities of life and not stop for fi ve full minutes. To write them down without any hesitation, almost like free association and to NOT LET THAT PEN STOP WRITING for fi ve minutes… No time to question the subconscious. When done, I looked at my paper and began crossing out all the possibilities that I didn't really like, the ones that I wasn't even sure why it was I wrote them down… Then I got to 'break a world travel record.' Huh? Where the hell did I ever get an idea like that? I skipped over it and let it be and I moved onto the next. But after some time, I realized it was the only idea left stand- ing. Maybe it's worth pursuing? I knew what I had to do. I had been traveling my whole life with nothing to show for it other than my memories and my stories to random strangers on weird train rides who probably didn't even believe the tales I told them. "You lived on the run till you were eighteen?" "Yeah, I escaped from the most noto- rious juvenile institution in America and hid out for years." "…Right, psycho." That's how they looked at me. Well, it was time to prove to the world that my stories of travel were real. I had to set a world travel record. So, I Googled 'travel records to be broken' and found out that the longest road trip in a sin- gle country was only 19,000 miles. I had found my calling. I spent my whole life as a homeless runaway teen turned vaga- bond turned young entrepreneur turned writer and had LIVED on the road with NOTHING to show for it… Well, all that was about to change. And so I packed my car, hopped in the driver's seat with my girlfriend (at the time), with no idea as to what I was about to get myself into. My foot slammed the pedal and off we went… 122 days and 36,123 miles later, I had published my fi rst book and the Guinness World Record was mine. All it took was a little pain to rev my engine in the right direction. Greg Cayea is a modern-day beatnik, sketch-artist and author, scribbling his life one story at a time. Visit www.Scram- bledGregs.com. Alone in a Crowded Room BREAKING THROUGH By Greg Cayea 34 wholelifetimes.com Photos: Greg Cayea