Happiness is an end to which many roads lead.

From the air it seems like New York’s skyscrapers reach towards you, each a unique, wizened individual with stoic stories to share. The mirror of The Hudson is pretending to be a sunset—saturated rose hues that rise to the occasion as if they knew the wringing weight of your heart when it is time to leave.

The prominent spokes-building of the skyline, The Empire State Building, accuses you of being an unfaithful lover because you come but always go, leaving behind cities that are more than worthy of spending a lifetime within.

New York knows it has got it going on. It’s attuned to the fact that it’s the most popular kid at the lunch table, the prettiest girl in the room, the star of the football team, the lead in the play, the richest kid on the block and the craziest mother focker bonging everclear at the frat house.

“What made you think a five-day visit back would be enough?” the shrinking Empire State Building asks in with the same tone that shovers tell each other off with on the subway.

You look to The World Trade Tower for help, but he is silent. It is the rose reflecting Chrysler Building who is kind and finally comes to your rescue. “Remember,” she says to the blazing skyline, “That New York is the city that not only put the -ing in the slama-lama-ding-dong, but also puts the -elation in open-relationship.” The sonorous sound of that building’s voice rings out over the plane’s jet engine and thanks you for your visit and hopes she will see you soon.

“When you return, because you will return, wear your dancing pants and dancing boots,” she says. And before you can thank her, Old New Amsterdam slips away, the plane turns out of the wind and points itself smack straight to Saint Johns Canada where you will meet up with your romance from this year’s TBEX Travel Bloggers Convention, Candice, with whom you rashly, but without regret, booked a ticket to Iceland with two days after the conference. Before the weekend, the two of you will fly together to Iceland to travel and research an article on the fishing industry.

At the airport gate in Newark, I texted my brothers because I missed them, chatted with friends in various cities and with the impeccable timing of Superman, The Flaming Lips shuffled from my iPod to my earbuds and to sing my exact thoughts.

The song sang, “I asked you a question, but I didn’t need you to reply. ‘Is it getting heavy?’ But then I realized… Well I thought it was as already getting as heavy as can be.”

My interpretation of this line of lyric is the realization of that point in a relationship when both parties take a deep breath and realize, whoa nelly, shit just got serious. My relationship with the world, open-ended, non-exclusive and perfidious has been getting seriously heavy.

What I mean is this: For the last six years, and to a greater degree in the last two years since leaving my non-profit job, my life has been here, there and everywhere. Focussing on travel writing and journalism, it has been natural to travel a lot. But travel for me has never been so much about places, but people in those places. I am now, as they say, pot committed to this lifestyle. The further I travel down this road the harder it will be to stop. At this point, I can’t imagine turning around and returning to a “normal” 8-5 job with 2-3 weeks vacation a year. To me, that feels like a prison sentence. With that sort of schedule, I would be cut off from seeing the people in my life that makes it worthwhile in the first place.

There are different Jeeps for different peeps. Different ways for different days. Different steeples for different peoples. Happiness is an end to which many roads lead.

These last few years I have been chopping my heart into little pieces and putting those pieces here there and everywhere. On a bad day, this can feel like a broken heart. But on most days, and most are good, it fills me with a profound gratefulness for this intrepid ball of globe where I was gifted with a body and breath.

I’ve learned not to prescribe my own lifestyle on others. But I suspect some of the readers of this blog are of the intrepid sect who long for the road as I do, who need it to feel alive. If this is you, I have this bit of biased advice to offer:

Keep going. Take the risks that you need to and when you stumble, because you will stumble, have faith that eventually you will find your balance on the tightrope of life. Don’t listen to life as the way the world tells you to lead it. Accept that your parents will be worried about you, your brother might tell you to get a normal job like everyone else, and at times you might feel like the only person who believes in and understands what you are doing and why.

Make your own way of living. Do what you love, and someone somewhere will send you a paycheck for that. Along the way you will struggle, you might get into a bit of debt, you will likely go several years without health insurance, you might not be able to buy those new shoes you want, but you will have the life you want. And if you are doing what you love, you don’t need those new shoes. If you want to ride horses, then ride horses. If you want to climb mountains, then climb mountains. If you want to sharpen pencils for a living, then whatever, be the best pencil sharpener in the world. Whatever you do, you can always find ways to use that to build yourself and those around you up, just as those genuine seekers you find along the way will build you up, will reach out to you when you most need them.

On a plane departing from a city I love but have left again, headed towards one you don’t know, that feeling of profound gratefulness settles. I think back on the previous year and years and the chance moments that only in hindsight do we realize were the moments that changed everything. I recite one of my favorite quotations from memory, and watch as the stars slowly replace a sunset that fades to black.

Have a lived life instead of a career. Put your days in the safekeeping of good taste. Lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses. If you don’t like the style of others, cultivate your own. Get to know the tricks of reproduction, be a self-publisher even in conversation, and then the joy of working can fill your days. -George Conrad