Who needs National Lampoon when our own families can provide so much entertainment? Most freelancers love what we do for a living because of the freedom we have, especially during the holidays.

Greetings. I’m Matt, editor of this site. For those of you who are traditionally employed, this story for you. I’m keeping a record of my holiday vacation with my family.

For this exercise, I need to say a bit about my family. My mother is the very definition of “Matriarch”. She is traditionally employed and the mother of four adult children. Only one of us has kids of our own and that’s one of my sisters, who lives eight hours away in Alabama. My mother uses all of her PTO to visit her grandchildren, and the holidays are a part of that system.

The rest of us live in Virginia. My little brother lives at home with my mom and my other sister and I live in other towns, an hour away, but in different directions. Both my brother and sister work in foodservice and have to request this time off several weeks in advance, as PTO isn’t a thing in foodservice. There is your introduction, let’s get on with the adventure.

Preparation

“You’re self-employed. You can do whatever you want. You always try to get out of this, but I’m not letting you skip out on the trip to Alabama this year.”

This conversation is all about consequences. This is what I get for bragging about having the ability to work from anywhere in the world, whenever I want. For all of you aspiring freelancers, don’t brag. You could end up in this exact situation, unable to come up with a viable excuse to get out of an 8 hour drive with your mother and grown siblings.

I did everything I could to get out of this situation. I even started applying for part-time jobs. But it was all for naught. So here I was, on the eve of this annual pilgrimage to Alabama, and I had run out of options.

My mother is one of those health nuts that wakes up at 5 AM every day to hit the gym. And this is when she was planning on leaving the house. I’m not this kind of guy.

I wake up when I want, which is usually closer to lunch time for most people. So at 10 PM, I decide to pull an all-nighter. I GrubHub some Taco Bell, make tea, and fire up my gaming pc. My GrubHub order ran late. I had every intention of giving the driver a piece of my mind, but she caught the attention of my reticular activating system, and I kind of just let it slide.

With Overwatch on one screen and Netflix on the other, with a belly full of chalupa to boot, I felt pretty good about my decision. This option would allow me to get ready for the trip without being overly rushed and I could sleep on the way down.

Pick Up

When it comes to any holiday adventure, you know that at some point, things are going to go sideways. My family likes to do things the right way, and they started screwing up immediately. They didn’t show up at my apartment until almost 8 AM, putting them a solid hour and a half behind schedule.

My mother was grumpy and my siblings were stoned off their asses. They’re both daily smokers and my mother forbids the use and transport of weed when we travel. While there are multiple reasons for this, at least for most adults, her main reasoning is the neighborhood my sister and brother and law live in.

We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. And rather than freak out or try to hide it, we ordinarily fully embrace the lifestyle and even some of the stereotypes that come with being lower middle-class. However, my sister married a man that does pretty well for himself and they live in a classy neighborhood. So my mom doesn’t want us trashing up the place with our drugs. That’s more or less what it boils down to.

So what did my siblings do before jumping into the piece of shit rental mini van my mom got from Enterprise? They got destroyed. My sister was passed out and my brother was reading when they picked me up. I threw my bags in the fan, listened to everyone argue for about twenty minutes, and then fell asleep, just as I had planned it.

Unfortunately, I woke up a couple of hours later. The weather was pretty bad. It was raining sideways and the wind was strong enough to push the mini van all over the interstate. My mother decided it was time for a bathroom and gas break. I picked up a couple slices of pizza and a bottled water.

Worst Traffic Ever?

It was really hard to sleep for the rest of the trip. After our first stop, we hid pretty bad traffic, on and off, for the rest of the trip.

What is supposed to be an eight hour trip turned into ten. I managed to get another nap in for about an hour and a half.

My sister and brother in law have two kids, so by the time we got there, got unloaded, and played with the kids for a while, I was beat. It was 7 PM and I just couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.

We were all worn out. I don’t drink often, but after that trip, I definitely needed one. Between the all nighter, two happy and active kids, then ten hour trip, and a couple of drinks, it’s no wonder I was out so early. In Volume Two, I’ll talk about my plan for the rest of the adventure. So stay tuned.

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