Dr. Preston Grind stood in an unfamiliar forest, the buzzing of the natural world competing with the distant sound of construction that had intruded upon this space, which was to be Dr. Grind’s new home for the foreseeable future. He carried his duffel bag over his shoulder, which held three identical outfits, a pair of sneakers, and a dopp kit, and he lugged a tote bag in his other hand, which held a laptop, a tablet, and three notepads. Holding the bags, it seemed like too much and too little at the same time, that for such an endeavor, he should either have nothing but the clothes on his back or one hundred steamer trunks packed with all sorts of unnecessary items.
At various times since he’d embarked on this new project, he felt like he was a pioneer, setting off into an unknown landscape that would either swallow him whole or come to bear his own name. Other times he felt like an astronaut about to board an experimental rocket ship to explore a galaxy that was only theoretically known to exist. And other times, when his loneliness and depression threatened to derail all the therapy and positive thinking, he felt like he was simply embarking on a project doomed to failure, an error in judgment so profound that it would send him so far underground that no one would ever see him again.
There were times when Preston realized that if he were to take the emotions and anxieties that were inside him and place them next to the exterior calm of his actual body, it would be terrifying to behold. That he could hold the two aspects separate from each other, or at least make them work together, was a testament to his abilities, though he worried that they would become combustible next to each other and simply vaporize, leaving him nothing.
But now, having driven along the East Coast for the past three days, he simply felt like a man who was going to try something difficult and hope that it worked, which made him no different from most of the other inhabitants of this planet. It gave him the slightest amount of strength, to believe that he was both special and no different from anyone else, and he walked the last mile down the dirt road that had been dug out of the forest and happened upon the place where he would build his new family.