I jotted down these words on a piece of paper the evening of the 2nd day. The first day was about settling down, and not leaving. The second day was when I started thinking about how to make something of my time there, and what I needed to do.

Just as I didn’t ask for my blessings, I didn’t ask for my faults. But, just as I enjoy my blessings without question, I must also strive to overcome my challenges, also without question.

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Some may say I left and went on an adventure. The cold reality is that I merely escaped into a world I created. Buying land is just the first step to creating my own world, but it won’t change the fact that I haven’t figured out how to live, thrive, and be happy in this one.

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I went to a meditation session today. The guy said we must learn to become independent of our egos. He said our egos manifest themselves in our desire to control externalities. Instead, we must control ourselves, overcome our fears and crutches, and adapt to our external world as it is.

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I am nobody. Anonymous, unremarkable. I can vanish now, and nobody will notice. The only way to change that is to engage.

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I’m trying to change. Baby steps, I tell myself. I try not to avoid eye contact. I say “hi.” I ask strangers what’s going on at this exhibit. Maybe tomorrow I’ll introduce myself to someone.

As I wrote in the previous post, I had considerable success in changing how I interacted with my environment. But it was a struggle to get there, and I thought it was worth posting the words as they were written at the time.

The following started off as a letter, but then was converted into a blog post in letter form. Who the “you” is is not important; I used the format of a letter as a literary device, to bring out a certain tone that was direct and focused, without the distractions of flowery descriptive prose. The words below are for you, the readers of this blog, not “you”, the addressee of this “letter”.

When we parted, you said you thought I looked smaller. The people we respect always look bigger, so if I looked smaller to you, maybe I lost your respect. I thought about that, then laughed out loud. I laughed because you have no idea what it was like for me to be at Burning Man, alone. The truth is, I am exceedingly proud of myself for all that I’ve accomplished this week.

For starters, I am proud of the fact that in less than a week, I planned, assembled, tested and acquired all the gear and supplies I needed to be a self-sufficient one-person camp, but with a compact enough footprint to fit in my little car, without having ever been to Burning Man, and only found myself missing two items during the entire week. I am proud of the fact that I designed my shade structure on the fly at a Home Depot, picking up necessary supplies as I planned each aspect of the structure in my head. I am proud of the fact that, despite never having built the actual structure other than in my head, it turned out exactly as I’d envisioned, and that it only took me half an hour to build, alone. I am proud of the fact that the shade structure withstood a week of constant pounding from the winds gusting across the playa, with very minimal damage and no repairs in the interim. I am proud of the fact that I struck camp entirely alone, pulling rebar stakes driven deep into the ground using nothing but a length of para-cord, a piece of two-by-two, and my own two arms. I am proud of all this, because I personally don’t know of very many people who could’ve done what I did.

And that was the easy part.

You have no idea how terrified I was when I arrived, alone, and surrounded in a strange environment unlike anything I’d ever seen before. You have no idea how, as an introvert, every new sight, sound, smell, or person felt like a threat to me, and the abject terror I experienced while being bombarded with a constant barrage of threatening encounters without a single friend in sight. You have no idea how dejected and distraught I felt when I asked to join the safety of you and our friends’ camp, and you threw me out, and sent me off to go alone or go home. You have no idea what went through my head as I sat in my car, trying to decide which it was going to be: to remain in this terrifying space alone, or to retreat to the relative comfort of the open road.

You have no idea how much courage it took to decide to stay, to put up that shade structure, to pound those stakes into the ground, to commit myself despite immense trepidation and doubt. But I did stay, and for that I am proud.

You have no idea how much courage it took me to decide that in order to enjoy Burning Man, I had to change. That I had to doff my armor of introversion that has protected me for so long, and open myself up to new experiences and people, and actively engage this unfamiliar world with open arms. But I did open up and engage, and for that I am proud.

I used to be afraid of talking to strangers. At Burning Man, I introduced myself to girls I didn’t know, for the first time in my life. I helped a lady carry ice down the street, instead of simply watching her struggle. When on my daily morning stroll, I said “good morning” to people I passed. When invited off the streets to take a drink, I never said no. These are all things that I used to be terrified of doing, but I overcame my fear, and for that I am proud.

I used to be so afraid of dancing that I would intentionally, with great effort, walk off beat when in the presence of music, lest I be seen “dancing.” At Burning Man, I overcame this fear, and went dancing for the first time in my life, and for that I am proud.

I used to be terrified of eye contact. I went to an eye contact workshop and stared at several strangers in their eyes for minutes at a time, opening myself up to them completely, trying to fill myself with compassion because when you stare someone in the eye, they feel what you feel. It was uncomfortable and scary, but I did this, and for that I am proud.

I never thought I’d find an inner peace, a feeling of wholeness and compassion for the world around me while in the midst of strangers. But I found all that, as fleeing as it was, and for that I am proud.

I climbed the fire truck ladder, despite the wind, and for that I am proud. I went down the big slide, four times, even though people were around watching and it looked kinda scary, and for that I am proud. I woke up every morning at 7:30am, staying out until well past midnight almost every night, making each day count, and for that I am proud.

I began the process of healing my deepest, darkest and most persistent emotional woes, by examining the darkest moments of my past, and for that I am proud.

Me, smaller? Hardly. I’ve never been bigger. So I’m sure you were referring to the 8 pounds of weight that I’d lost that week.

Those of you who know me may recognize the addressee of this letter as being my ex-girlfriend Nikki. While she is portrayed antagonistically here, she ultimately deserves credit in the transformation I achieved at Burning Man. It was she, who, nearly two years ago when we began dating, set me on a path of rigorous introspection and self discovery. Without that gift, I would not be on the journey I am on today, nor would I have found the courage to do all I did at Burning Man. The antagonism in the letter arose from my disappointment in not having been able to share with her the cumulation of what we started together. Nonetheless, even as we now go our separate ways, I will forever be grateful for having been shown a way, which I may never have discovered on my own.

For me, Burning Man started in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Reno, which happened to be a major supply depot for the thousands of Burners headed to the desert. There were cases of water everywhere, and the parking lot crowded with vehicles of every description jam packed with equipment, furniture, bikes, supplies and people. The Burners were easy to spot, for the most part. If the cases of water and booze piled in their shopping carts didn’t give them away, their dress, or something about the way they looked did. This was the first time I realized that Burners were somehow different.

From the Wal-Mart parking lot, the trip to Black Rock City rapidly turns into a bona fide pilgrimage. Going East on I-80, even a casual observer will notice the unusual concentration of RVs and vehicles with bikes strapped onto them. These vehicles then stream off on exit 43 onto Route 447, which becomes saturated with Burner-mobiles. As Gerlach, the nearest permanent town to Black Rock City approaches, this line of car comes to a halt. Ahead, an endless snake of red tail lights. To the rear, a winding trail of bright white headlights. Off in the distance, glittering dances of light indicated the location of the promised land. The congestion was such that people put their cars into park, shut off their engines, and walked around, chatting with neighbors. I had a nice conversation with the fellow behind me, a butcher from Oakland; my first of many conversations with a fellow Burner.

By the time I reached the gates, it was 4:30am. Being a first timer (a “virgin” as they call you), I dutifully performed my rite of passage by ringing a bell with all my might, and shouting “I am no longer a virgin”. Of course, I was alone, and I don’t think anybody really cared.

Once I entered the playa proper, excitement quickly turned into confusion, then disorientation and panic. It was still pitch dark, and with few camps set up, the streets were hard to discern from the camp sites. I’d seen maps, but I hadn’t anticipated the enormity of the “city.” In the darkness, I had no sense of scale. The concentric roads seemingly spiraled into chaos, the dust obscuring their edges, fueling my disorientation. I knew my friends were planning on camping at around 8:30 and D. They had been ahead of me on I-80, but without cellphone reception, I had no way of contacting them. I drove around, trying to spot the dark suburban they were in, but it was simply too dark to identify cars, much less any specific one. I eventually pulled into an area that seemed relatively empty and quiet, then dismounted.

With a water bottle, flashlight, and GPS in hand, I began a search for my friends. To make sure I could return to my car, my only base in this foreign place, I saved a marker on my GPS. It was dusk, and the world around me emerged, ever clearly, as the minutes ticked by. But the light only added to my disorientation. Sometime during the night, I had been transported into a vast flat empty dried lakebed, where something resembling the cross between a refugee camp, frat house, and art gallery was assembling. There was nothing about the place that felt familiar, especially after my weeks alone on the road. As I walked, I reflected upon my own introversion, realizing with dread that everything was strange and new and therefore threatening and frightening. I walked with my senses alert, every new encounter evoking a fight-or-flight reaction. I desperately wished for safety, to take refuge among familiar faces.

I walked for hours, starting with 8:30 & D and gradually spiraled outwards. The rigor of walking kept me sane, focusing my hightened senses on spotting and identifying tents and cars that looked familiar. I’d lent them my yellow Coleman tent, of which there were a couple of instances. None of them had the dark colored Suburban or any familiar bikes parked nearby, but I marked their location on my GPS and walked on, to confirm later.

It wasn’t until around 8am that I spotted my friends, only a few hundred yards away from where I’d parked. They had taken a wrong turn and had been delayed. I ran towards them, relief spreading through my body. I was safe.

I pulled Nikki aside and told her how afraid I was, and asked her to reconsider letting me camp with them. When I decided to go to Burning Man at the last minute, I’d volunteered to camp separately, and Nikki had urged me earlier in Reno to camp separately as well. But now, actually on the playa, I was as frightened as a 3 year old separated from his mother in an unfamiliar mall. I wanted to be near friendly faces, where I could feel safe. There was no way I could survive out here on my own. But Nikki wouldn’t budge. She didn’t want me around her camp; I could either camp alone, or go home. I stormed back to my car, frustrated that someone I considered a friend wouldn’t grant me a safe harbor at a time of distress. I retreated to the relative safety of my car.

I sat for a long time, considering my options. I could stay, and potentially be scared and miserable for a week, or I could go home. Except I have no home. I felt like I couldn’t leave, but I couldn’t start unpacking because I wasn’t sure how long I would want to stay. Why unpack if I might decide to leave in a few hours? Out of desperation, I headed back to my friends’ camp.

At their camp, I helped improvise a shade structure out of scavenged materiel originally intended to be a hammock structure. That was something I could do. I can build things. Helping Igor build that structure calmed me enough, that I was then able to head back to my car, and start pulling out lumber to build my own shade structure. It appeared that I would be staying, at least for a little while.