Last year as we left for burning man my whole life seemed golden. My wife and I had just finished rebuilding a beautiful vintage trailer, we had money in the bank, our kids were in a great place; seriously I was on top of the world. Then it all fell apart one moment by one moment.
On the way to the burn, our vintage trailer broke. And I mean broke, we lost a wheel due to hub failure which pulled the kitchen wall off the trailer about 2/3rds the length of the floor. Stopped on the side of the freeway 1 hour out of town we were sunk. My wife and I being creative, engineers, and determined found a trailer shop, bought new hubs, got the trailer off the ground, and got the wheels back on. All on the side of the freeway. We found an empty lot, and used a combination of tire jacks and brute strength to get the wall back up and pushed into the trailer. Proud of our resourcefulness we got back on the road. 1 hour from our destination, tragedy. The damage had been deeper than we thought, the entire kitchen floor had sagged, made contact with the wheel, shredded it and pulled the kitchen wall off again. We managed to get a spare on, kinda fix it and limp the trailer the last 60 miles stopping every 10 to make sure we did not become a road hazard. The trailer is still in Nevada.
There was a bigger dark cloud hanging over our lives though. Jules was increasingly in extreme pain, and it became very apparent how much she was trying to mask that while we lived in the desert for 20 days. This dark cloud was growing and would eventually turn into a battle with stage 4 cancer which I have already written briefly about.
We came home to more drama too. While we were gone our daughter (then 14) had decided she had enough of her bio dads lies and drinking. She had removed herself from his house, staying with friends and other family while we were gone, never once thinking to call us and let us know... I am still, on one hand, proud of her for knowing the situation was going down hill to an unsafe place and solving it, I am still frustrated we were not here for her during that change.
Add to that a number of deaths in my wife's family and this year has seriously been one of the hardest of my life. This is why I am pushing to get back to where it all went wrong, so we can start again, hit the reset button in a way, with my wife healthy. Every year a group brings out a temple to the desert that gets burnt on Sunday. People spend 7 days reading, writing, and leaving mementos in this temple to people, things, or whatever that they want to change or remember. Then it all gets burned to the ground, turned to ash, released to the ether as the hippies like to say. I have some shit I want to burn in that temple this year, some serious shit.
The other cathartic process for me is building. I work for the org and help to build/problem solve things out on the desert floor. It feels good to be a grunt, to swing a hammer, cut pieces, and not have to think. I am a software engineer in the real world and to take a break from the heady work and just be physical is the same reason I love rugby, only in this case I get to help create something useful, something beautiful.
Sometimes you have to get away, burn it all to the ground and start again... This year is one of those years where it all needs to burn.