Success

June 22, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s your top tip to be successful in life?
View all responses

There are two ways to be successful in life. The first is to decide what being successful means to you, then focus on what will get you there. If being successful means being in a loving relationship, then prioritize that, don’t be distracted by what others think being successful means. If being successful means raising healthy and happy children, don’t give up time with them for other pursuits that might interfere, though sometimes, admittedly, what interferes is the need to make enough money to support those children. If being successful means making a ton of money, then go after it, but don’t be surprised when you find that other parts of your life aren’t as satisfying. If being successful means being a good person, following one’s faith, or doing simple acts of kindness, then that’s what you focus on.

Of course, just because you go after something doesn’t mean you will succeed at it, so this brings me to the second way of being successful — being grateful for what you have and what you have accomplished. Enjoying the moment. Celebrating your good fortune and accepting that you did what you could. And not comparing yourself to others. What you might see as their success, they might not. In fact, they might be comparing themselves to you, thinking you are the successful one.

When I became a writer, I hoped for success, which at the time meant being a self-supporting writer, selling enough books to make a living wage so I could write more books. Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed at being self-supporting, but I did succeed at writing. I wrote nine books, all of which were published. That I was not successful at promoting those books does not mitigate the success of having written all those words, told those stories, offered a helping hand to people who have lost a spouse or a child.

Just the other day, a woman came up to me to tell me she’d bought two copies of Grief: The Inside Story, one for her sister who had lost her husband and one for herself so she could understand what her sister was going through. It was due to the comfort offered in my book as well as the explanation of the mechanics of grief, that helped the sister finally sleep through the night, which, if you don’t know, is a big step for grievers. Also, the woman who bought the books was able to support her sister, letting her sister grieve as she needed to, without urging her to “get over it.” She had tears in her eyes as she thanked me for what I had given them.

So . . . . success. Yes? No? Well, the book did not solve my financial woes as I’d hoped, but oh, my, having truly helped someone who needed it? That is success. Maybe it’s even a more profound success than making money — to those two women, it certainly was.

So, in short, decide what success means to you, focus on what you need to do to achieve that success, and then celebrate whatever success comes your way, even if it comes in a way you never envisioned.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in culture, How to, photography, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Conceptions of Happiness

June 19, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s a common misconception people have about happiness?
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I’m not sure what misconceptions people have about happiness since I don’t know how they perceive happiness.

I do know that happiness is elusive. If we go chasing it, we don’t always find it. If we stop chasing it, happiness often finds us. And even if happiness doesn’t find us, there are other things that are just as important: contentment, being at peace, meeting challenges, living a meaningful life, making a difference to someone, helping others find happiness, creating something, growing a garden.

Sometimes, too, not being particularly happy is a proper response. Most reasonable people, in a tornado, try to get out of the wind, not revel in the devastation. Most reasonable people do not revel in misfortune, theirs or others. And, unless laughter is one’s way of dealing with anything intense in life, unhappiness during a time of grief is an entirely appropriate and reasonable response.

Neither happiness nor unhappiness is a constant state. Both are in flux and either can change in a moment. And so can one’s perception.

Studies have indicated that happiness is found mainly in retrospect. For example, happy children don’t know they are happy. They simply are. It’s only later, when they look back, perhaps after a terrible time in their adult lives, that they realize they had been happy in their early years. For another example, when someone is involved in a challenging situation that takes all their time and energy, they don’t realize until later they were happy. In fact, often while going through this situation, people thought they were decidedly unhappy.

Think of some of the happy times in your life. Back then, were you aware you were happy? Chances are, you were involved in living and didn’t bother to stop to think how you were feeling at the moment. You just lived. Not pursuing happiness as such, just simply living with whatever happiness came your way.

Oddly, happiness can also be found in anticipation. When a person is going through a difficult time, sometimes they get through the days by looking ahead to future happiness. Those who are grieving can hope for a time when joy might come again. If work is difficult, people can find happiness in planning a vacation.

In other words, happiness is not generally found in the present; it’s a construct of both the past and the future, which seems to make happiness irrelevant to the present.

Perhaps oddly, I have never considered happiness something to pursue. Even before I realized happiness was something lived in retrospect, I never thought it was relevant. I thought other things were more important. Trying to be a good person, for example. Doing the best I could for myself and others. Learning, for sure — I have always pursued knowledge, have always searched for a deeper truth.

I wasn’t happy very often, but it didn’t seem to matter. In fact, being not happy (neither happy nor unhappy) is my default state, so perhaps I’m not the best person to be blogging about happiness.

Still, having said all this, whatever your conceptions of happiness are, I hope you find what you are looking for.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Growing

June 18, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What is one way you have grown this year?
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One way I have grown this year? Older. I’ve grown older. I don’t really feel any older than I did a year ago, but there is one indication of that growth: some things don’t heal as fast as they once did. Well, one thing — sinus congestion. So far, I’ve tried just about every possibility, both medical and natural, and still, I have that sinus pressure and post-nasal drip. I’m waiting it out now, hoping it will cure itself. It did once upon a time — when I was young, I had allergies so bad I was almost comatose, but for some reason, I got over it. Maybe I will again.

Maybe not.

That acceptance of what life deals out is part of growth, I suppose, though such acceptance isn’t a recent growth experience for me — it came from years of grief over my various losses and all the living that followed.

I’m sure this blog prompt is about personal growth, though I tend to think I’ve grown up as much as I am going to get. I’m not even sure I want to develop further. At this point, will any sort of growth make my life better? I suppose it’s possible, but I also suppose it’s possible that a period of de-growth will be coming as I continue to age. I hope not — I appreciate the lessons I’ve learned in life, and I hang on to whatever wisdom I gleaned from them. I’d hate to think I’d forget those lessons and have to learn them again. It was painful enough the first time!

Personal growth supposedly contributes to fulfillment, self-awareness, mindfulness, well-being and happiness, which I’m all for when it comes to younger people, and was all for when I was young. But me now? I’m as self-aware as I want to be (any more awareness would turn me too far inward); I try to be mindful whatever I am doing for safety’s sake if nothing else; I have as much fulfillment as I can handle; and my sense of well-being is doing as well as can be expected. Does that sound smug? I don’t mean to be. I am grateful for where I am in life.

Gratitude. Acceptance. Mindfulness. Those are all lessons I’ve learned, things I practice. That seems enough. For now, anyway.

As it is, the only growth I celebrate is what is in my garden. That sort of growth I can get behind!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, gardening, life. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Talking to My Twenty-year-old Self

June 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?
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Hypothetical questions like this make me think — not about the question I’m supposed to blog about, but the mechanics of it.

Truly, assuming there was something I wished I could tell my twenty-year old self, how would that work?

At first, I thought of leaving a message somewhere for me to find when I reached this age, but then I realized that’s the reverse of the question. Besides, there’s nothing my twenty-year old self could say to me today that would make any difference. If there was something that was important enough for that younger version of me to want forwarded into the future, it’s already been done. First, there is a little thing called a memory. Second, even if I don’t recall the important thing itself, it would be written in my very life — everything that ever happened to me stemmed from the thoughts of that year (and every year) so any message would be redundant.

As for the logistics of getting a message back to that younger self — reverse email? But email hadn’t been invented back then. That twenty-year old self would have to wait several more decades to receive the message, and by then, she’d be almost as old as I am now. If not that, then what? Time travel? Okay, so assume I went back in time, how would I ever convince that person I was her? I’m sure she’d think I was a relation, perhaps a great-aunt or some such because I did at one time bear a distinct resemblance to my mother.

I remember when I was young not ever actually thinking that old people were forever old, but I somehow presumed it. I knew people grew older, but it just seemed to me, in that accepting way of youth, that they were old, and had always been, just as I was young, and would always be. It makes sense, I suppose — when you’re young, you can see the changes in yourself as you graduate to a new grade every year, but the older folks always looked the same. I don’t know when it struck me that old folks had once been young, that they’d lived a whole life before getting old, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen until later in my twenties or even in my thirties. (I knew people aged, of course, but old age seemed so alien to my young self that I never made the connection.)

So there my young self would be, seeing this old woman, and no way would my twenty-year old self ever believe that I was this old. Oddly, I doubt that my current self would even recognize that young self. Odder still, now that I’m old, I feel as if I’ve always been old, as if I’d never been young. I mean, I know I was, but . . . who can remember that far back? Or care? It is easier just to accept what I am today and go with that feeling rather than give credence to a past.

Which means, I suppose, that even if I could go back and tell my twenty-year old self something, there’s nothing I would wish to tell her.

As for the photo accompanying this article, I realize it’s not my twenty-year old self, but nowadays, one young age is as remote as the other.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, culture, history/myth, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 6 Comments »

Loyal Subscribers

June 8, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
How do you build loyal subscribers?
View all responses

I find it interesting that most of these blog prompts have nothing to do with me, such as today’s prompt about building loyal subscribers. I have no idea how to build loyalty, have no idea if anyone has even subscribed to my blog. I do know a few friends get my blog by email, which isn’t really fair — they get to keep up with me on a daily basis, and I don’t know what’s going on with them. You’d think they’d be kind enough to reciprocate with their own blog, wouldn’t you? (I’m being facetious. If I want to know what’s going on with them, I could simply call, and I don’t, so who’s the one who isn’t being fair?)

Actually, according to WordPress, I do have some subscribers, and a few more have subscribed in the past few days, so thank you for subscribing!

As for building loyalty — apparently, somewhere along the line I have done so since I see many of the same names in comments and “likes,” but as I’ve mentioned before, I have no idea why anyone reads what I write, though I do appreciate everyone who does. It makes blogging seem so much less like throwing a tiny penlight out into the great darkness of the unknown and more like connecting with friends.

There are some people who have been with me almost from the beginning — starting from the time I wrote about writing, then tumbling into the whole morass of grief with me, and still showing up now that my posts range from stream of consciousness to gardening. Truly, hands across the nations! (Did I mention how grateful I am for you? Well, it bears repeating.)

I might not know how to purposely build a following, but I know how not to build subscribers by the millions — don’t be controversial. Almost all people who garner those sorts of numbers and that sort of loyalty do so by talking about things that gets people emotional, and I don’t want to do that. I know how a lot of my readers think, and I’d just as soon not get into discussions that either get my ire up or theirs. (And I don’t like to have to think of tactful ways of saying I disagree, so I don’t.)

Another way not to build loyal subscribers is to not show a bias because bias automatically gives people a connection to you. It’s almost impossible not to show a bias, and I’m sure mine shows occasionally, though my bias tends to be for irony and intelligence and truth-seeking rather than for any movement or ideology. And I have a definite bias against hypocrisy, emotion that passes as fact, and regimentation of thought. I spent most of my life around people who loved to force people to think their way, so I became adept at changing midstream partly to keep the peace and partly because I didn’t care enough either way to argue the point.

But then, can anyone tell if they are really bias-free? I’m not sure. It seems ingrained so that a biased person acts as if their bias is the truth rather than simply their way of seeing the truth. Case in point: one popular quasi news show has been bleeding viewers because a lot of people don’t like its far-left liberal slant, and all the journalists on the show profess to have no idea there is a slant — they thought they were being impartial.

Seems like a good idea for me to keep keeping away from controversial topics — that way I can keep my bias to myself. And I can keep the readers I have rather than trying to grow a larger subscriber’s list, which I don’t know how to do anyway.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, internet, photography, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Minimalism

June 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in minimalism?
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I’m not sure I believe in minimalism. I mean, I know it’s a “thing,” so I believe in its reality. I just don’t know how important it is as a universal lifestyle. Nor do I think it’s something I want to believe in for myself. Minimalism, by definition, is a philosophy centered on living intentionally with only what is essential. Sounds bleak to me. Not to take part in the abundance of today’s world? Not to celebrate small treats and treasures of the day?

Yep. Sounds bleak.

For artists and art lovers, minimalism is about simple-seeming artworks that the artist wants appreciated for the shapes and materials used rather than for some sort of narrative. Minimalism nowadays, though, generally refers to the way one lives. I imagine what is essential to a minimalist lifestyle depends on the person. I bet a lot of minimalists have more luxury items than I do — televisions, streaming services, fancy bathrooms, whatever. Of course, most people don’t consider those things luxury items, but a lot of what we take for granted truly is luxury — running water in the house, an “inhouse” rather than an outhouse, space to move around your home without being elbowed by others, heating systems, cooling systems, clothes washers and dishwashers. For thousands of years, these would have been considered unimaginable luxuries. Anything beyond these “basics” would have been utter opulence.

Hmm. I think I’m getting away from my premise. Or perhaps not. A true minimalist would be living in the woods, without any of these trappings of civilization, so I tend to think what the minimalists of today are really looking for is to own their possessions, not to be owned by them. Having a lot of things can weigh one down. Having to take care of a lot of things can take up time better spent on other things such as new experiences.

It’s funny to think how after Jeff died, I got rid of about half of all we owned together as well as all he owned by himself except for a small box of things I promised to keep plus a few items I couldn’t get rid of. Then, after my father died, I got rid of about half of what was left, just enough to fit in a single storage unit. My goal was to eventually get rid of everything and just live with what fit in my car. I liked the idea of not owning anything, mostly, I think, because I didn’t how I was going to live on my minimal income and I didn’t want to keep paying to store my personal effects.

Long before I could get rid of everything in my storage unit, I had the great good fortune to buy a house, which ended that minimally minimalist aspiration. So then I started in a time of “upsizing.” Besides my vintage car, I now own a house and a yard and a garage and furniture and appliances and tools and oh, so very many things. (A lot of the furnishings and such came from other people downsizing, so I suppose it evens out in the end.)

A few weeks ago, I responded to another blog prompt about Minimalist Living and mentioned that to a great extent, I do live a minimalist lifestyle, but as I said, I don’t call it that. I call it not buying things I didn’t need. I call it living debt-free, not buying anything I can’t afford right now. I call it using things up and not wasting anything.

Every once in a while, I think about owning all this stuff. Not worrying about it; just thinking what it means. My house, after all, couldn’t fit in a storage unit if it would ever come to that. But part of my “minimalism” feeling is realizing I won’t have to dispose of anything I own. With luck, I’ll be here until my end, and then it will be someone else who has the headache of figuring out what to do with it all.

Meantime, I live quietly, frugally (though frugal connotes a sense of deprivation, I don’t deprive myself of anything I want; I simply don’t want a whole lot).

So does this mean I believe in minimalism after all? No. I don’t believe in any movement. I was living small before there was such as thing as minimalism. I don’t need a name (or permission!) to live the way I am living.

To be honest, if you saw my house and my yard, minimalism would never enter your mind. You’d see (as people always tell me they see) comfort, coziness, cleanness. And lushness!! A fully modernized house with old-fashioned touches and set in a gorgeous yard is definitely not minimalist.

It is utter luxury.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Eye-Catching

June 1, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Go on a walk today and share a photo of something that catches your eye.
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I thought I’d respond to this blog prompt by actually doing what it asked. I went on a walk! First time in I don’t know how long, though it must have been a very long time because the neighbors have been waiting outside for me to stop by, and well, as you can see, that didn’t have a good outcome for them.

I was only going to walk a couple of blocks just to say that I walked, but I ended up walking a couple of miles. It reminded me of what I liked about walking — the lovely morning, the clean smell, the soft air, the blue skies, the gentle breeze. But it also reminded me of why I have a hard time forcing myself to get back to daily walking — utter boredom. Nothing to see other than what I’ve already seen a thousand times. (Well, the family on the bench was a bit different configuration; they are often rearranged and dressed to memorialize the season with hearts, Easter baskets, or Santa hats.) In previous living situations, when I walked for miles each day, I was able to find isolated paths, hiking trails, and vistas within walking distance of where I lived, but now all I see are the same houses, the same parked cars, the same cracked pavements, the same brown fields.

I’d walked all over town during my first years here, and because of a definite dog problem in this area, I soon learned to stick to one guaranteed safe route. But oh, so utterly boring seeing the same thing over and over and over again. (It’s why I stopped going to the library — the thousandth time I saw those same books did me in.) When I do manage to get out to walk (hard in the summer because I use up my energy on yard work), I try to think of it as a walking meditation, paying attention to the simple act of walking, but then I become aware of my slightly unsteady knees, and that’s no fun.

But that wasn’t today. Today was a real treat. It was also nice to find out I can still walk at least that far without any trouble. Added to the benefit, I exchanged a few words with one neighbor and made a point of stopping to visit with a friend.

Tomorrow, I get back to yard word, so there won’t be time or energy or inclination for a spur of the moment walk. Today was a rare day off, taken because in a few days, I won’t have any days off. The larkspur are finished flowering (which is odd because usually at the end of May they are at the height of their beauty). Soon the seed pods will form, which means collecting the seeds and pulling up the dead larkspur — not an easy task since there are so many of them. And after that, it’s a matter of planting new flower seeds for the summer, buying new plants, or transplanting overcrowded plants to fill in empty spots.

Later in the summer, there will be more color, and perhaps a real explosion of color come fall when the chrysanthemum bloom. Actually, it’s the lack of things to see outside of my own yard that helped me overcame my reluctance for work-heavy landscaping in order to have something fun to see. Even in a time where so many flowers are finished for the season, there are new areas that are flowering.

In fact, the thing that most caught my eye during today’s excursion (besides my skeletal neighbors, that is) was my own wildflower garden leading up to my back door.

These yellow coreopsis (or coreopsises or even coreopses for you Latin afficionados) started with only a couple of seedlings, and now look! So prolific and so sunny.

Truly eye-catching.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, life, home, gardening. Tags: , , , , , , . 11 Comments »

Unlimited Budget

May 31, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?
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This blog prompt should have been a no brainer. Unfortunately, because I overthink everything, I have a hard time with hypothetical questions, this one most of all. For example, I started out wondering what it means by “budget.” To me (and to the dictionary), a budget is basically a financial plan that helps a person understand what money they have to spend every month, allocates a sufficient amount of income for fixed expenditures such as rent and utilities, and helps control spending to avoid going into debt. But that definition doesn’t fit the postulated scenario at all. I suppose I could make out a budget for an infinite amount of income for a day without actually spending anything, but it seems a waste to go through all that simply for one day’s worth of phony money.

So if the question isn’t about a budget as such, does it mean simply having an infinite amount of money to spend for one day? If so, how does the money appear? A credit card with no limit? If so, who pays the bill? Or does the money appear in my banking account? If so, how does the depositer know how much I will be spending?

Do I know ahead of time what day that “unlimited budget” will show up so I can plan how to use the largess? Or will it just appear one day, leaving me to wing it, and hoping I don’t get so overwrought by the stress of it all that I blow the whole deal?

And how does one spend the money? Go online and book airline trips and cruises for a future day? Will the travel plans still be available when the time comes, or will they have disappeared along with that “unlimited budget” day?

How would a credit card work anyway? The charges don’t always show up the same day as an order is placed, so if I were to buy a whole lot of stuff at a mall or online or wherever, there’s a chance that once the “unlimited budget” deal expired, I’d get stuck with a bill for things I would never have bought in the first place.

It would make sense to buy property or some other tangible asset, but I know for a fact, one cannot buy any property in a single day. Or maybe one can if one has that “unlimited budget” at one’s disposal. But still, I tend to think not. Realtors, lawyers, sellers, escrow folk and everyone else involved in a major sale don’t work on a moment’s notice.

I would think a good use of the budget would be to write checks to local non-profits, but would the money still be there when they cashed the checks? It doesn’t seem like it would be, and I have a hunch if I went to the bank and got trunk loads of cash to hand out to those groups, I would get into a whole lot of trouble. First of all, you can’t take out too much cash from a bank without dealing with a lot of paperwork. Second of all, unless the organizers were greedy and grabbed the cash for themselves, they’d certainly have questions about its legitimacy.

It all seems like too much headache.

In the end, I suppose I’d just buy what I normally buy on any given day, which is . . . not a single thing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Profound Advice

May 29, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s the most profound piece of advice you’ve been given? Did you take it?
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WordPress, the host of my blog, is starting to pull out all sorts of tricks to get us more involved, or so I imagine, since people tend not to like long-form blogging anymore, seeming to prefer the photos, quick clips, and brief comments posted on most social networking sites. Some of what WordPress is doing is fun — for example, I won a “streak freeze” badge, which if I’m reading it right, if I miss a day of blogging activity, it still counts as an active day. It won’t matter to me and my personal stats, though. If I miss a day, I’m honest enough to admit it, if only to myself, but so far this year, I’ve posted each day. (149 days in a row so far.)

Oddly, though WordPress does keep tabs of my posting “streak,” they’ve only been counting the past ten days for their new activity badge, so according to that I’m on a 10-day streak.

Another thing they are doing, besides the badges and different challenges, is listing the blogs I posted on a particular day. Supposedly, I’ve only posted five times on a May 29th, but they don’t seem to include the ten years prior to 2016 when I was blogging every day. If I really cared, of course, I could go back and find those posts for myself, but I don’t. Don’t care, I mean. The past is the past.

Still, I did check out a few of the previous May 29 posts that they listed, and I came across an interesting one that seems to fit today’s blog prompt. In the post, When You Have to Go, I mentioned all the different places I went when I had to “go” during my cross-country trip, and I found a bit of advice that I’d forgotten. I don’t even remember who told me, but it was profound to me, anyway. She suggested that when I was camping, I should take a quart yogurt container into the tent for late night emergencies. The container easily contours to fit, and the cover made it spill proof. I followed her advice, and it truly was miraculous! I keep a container in my house in case of plumbing problems, which has also been a boon.

Okay, so the advice wasn’t profound in the sense of emotional or philosophical depth, or of something with far-reaching significance, and I’m sure it wasn’t the most profound advice I’d ever been given (though I can’t think of any such advice offhand), and yet, when you have to go, there’s nothing more profound than a place (or a yogurt container) to find relief.

Incidentally, the photo attached to this post is one I took at the Kohler Design Center located in Kohler, Wisconsin. If you look closely, you will see that the sculpture, which took up an entire wall, was created from dozens of stacked toilets.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, How to, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 11 Comments »

The Perfect Road Trip

May 24, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
How do you plan the perfect road trip?
View all responses

The perfect road trip, obviously, is the one that’s perfect for you, so my experience might not be applicable. For one thing, I had years to plan since I was taking care of my aged father at the time and couldn’t take off even if I had wanted to. For another thing, grief still lay heavily on me, so I wouldn’t have enjoyed the trip even if I could have taken off. For yet another thing, it was great having such a long time to plan because a big part of a road trip is in the planning.

And the not planning.

I had originally wanted to do an epic hiking trip, such as one of the long trails or a walk across the country or anything that would take me out of myself and perhaps change both me and the trajectory of my life. When it turned out that I couldn’t do an epic hike (too much water to carry and not enough stamina), I decided to walk across the country my own way by driving from campsite to campsite and from hiking trail to hiking trail. That way, I got the feel of a lot of different places as well as the feel of a doing a long hike without actually hiking the whole way.

Once I’d decided on the project, then it was time to decide what gear I needed for where I wanted to go. Since I left in February, my itinerary was obvious — along the southern edge of the country. Then, since I had no camping supplies, the next step was to research what I needed. I had a lot of backpacking equipment in preparation for the backpacking hike that never happened (except for one overnight hike and hundreds of day trips), but no car camping gear, such as a livable tent and heavier clothes. I of course posted all this preparation online, and some people found it amusing to watch what I was doing. I suppose it was amusing, my buying for a camping trip when I’d never camped before, especially since I might not even have been able to go on the long trip. But the preparation was important to me regardless of what might have happened in what at the time was an unforeseeable future.

I knew a lot of the spots where I wanted to stop — mostly national parks and national monuments, but also people I wanted to visit. (Many of my online friends volunteered to host me. Offline people warned me about going to stay with people I’d never met face to face, but in every case, the person I met in real life was exactly what they were like online, so it felt like what it was — a continuation of an established friendship.) I also left a lot unplanned because I didn’t want to keep to a strict schedule and I knew there would always be tantalizing vistas and advertisements along the road to drag me off course.

I was lucky; since I had no home at the time (my father had died, the house sold, and I had yet to decide where I was going to live), the trip didn’t have to be a quickie affair. In fact, I was gone almost six months. I might never have returned, but I had promised to do a dance performance, which put me on the clock, but it was still a lengthy trip. All the preparation helped make the whole adventure easier, including the “not planning” I mentioned above. As I travelled, people I didn’t know but who knew me through my grief blogs, invited me to stop by, which added surprising twists to my journey. In one case, a woman I met at a campground invited me to visit, and I decided what the heck, and that had surprising twists in a different way since I felt as I’d stumbled into a Southern Gothic story. Whew! I was never so glad to set on down the road.

I also didn’t camp as often as I’d planned because some of the campgrounds were closed or they didn’t feel right, or they were too full or too empty, but that’s where the money I’d set aside for a motel fund came in handy. As I’d learned, always plan for a change of plans.

If you can’t take a road trip and wish to do one vicariously, you can follow my trip here: Road Trip 2016 | Bertram’s Blog. It truly was a remarkable experience, both the road trip itself and the fun of planning it.

You can also plan a road trip without ever intending to go anywhere. Pick a route, follow along the road with Google maps or — heaven forbid! — a paper map, then see what photos and information you can find. With all the online resources available, there is a lot you can see in the palm of your hand.

Oh, I almost forgot — the most important thing when planning the perfect road trip? Having fun!

Chiricahua National Monument

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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