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I’ve never been much of an office kind of guy. The idea of sitting in a constrained area, staring at the same walls for hours on hours is just not an appealing way to spend a day working.

But, until the day comes where I win the lottery and become independently wealthy, it’s the reality of the station to spend more time then I like doing that very thing.

At the same time, though, I’ve been able to master the art of taking my office with me at times through drives in the car. And no, it’s not just running away from my problems. That’s an entirely different column.

For me, the car has always been something of a way out. Like most teens I would imagine, it was the means of escaping for a while and in my case it meant late afternoon jaunts into the mesh of country roads I had driven hundreds of times before.

Often those drives would be conducted solo with the all-American vision of windows down and music up. More than a few times a field approach provided the opportunity to park and just sit for a while among the corn, beans and high grasses that made up Murray County.

Thoughts were few and far between in those areas because there wasn’t much in the way of worries in those days. Typical teen stuff I suppose, like building up the courage to ask a girl out or some test that defined something or another, but not like the stresses of adulthood that inevitably followed.

This on-the-go attitude carried on through college, where the roads of Brookings County outside of Brookings, South Dakota provided the gravel office space for continuing my roaming journeys.

My friends and I even found an old barn accessed by an ancient bridge located not far outside of Brookings, where we would spend afternoons or nights doing any number of things. Yes, we realized we were probably trespassing to a certain degree though there was really no fence or signs to bar our way.

Semantics.

It was in college, however, where concerns and anxieties related to the world of adults began creeping in for the first time, no doubt an effect of a certain level of autonomy a student has in being away from home for the first time. Sure, there were still certain decisions that ran through the folks, but day-to-day living ran primarily through me and there is a certain level of fear that comes with that.

Luckily, a vacant dirt road and good music weren’t judging me on mistakes made during daily living. They were support networks that allowed times to think and dwell and solve with very few distractions.

Maybe that should be South Dakota’s new slogan. “South Dakota — so uninteresting we’re devoid of distraction.

That’s not completely fair I suppose and might be something of an unfair comparison. After spending enough time in the state, there was a certain amount of appreciation I developed for it.

Once I moved to Huron, the roads opened up a lot more as I was now fully an adult. Well, adultish shall we say.

Completely devoid of the support of my family I had enjoyed throughout the early runnings of my youth aside from a weekly phone call, life was now mine to do with as I saw fit and with that came lessons learned and responsibilities handled. Bills, rent, groceries — daily living.

Along with that responsibility came more stresses and anxieties that we all experience at one time or another and so once again, the back roads, and really the roads in general, of that part of the state provided times of contemplation.

Though, honestly, it’s not like it was that challenging. Unless you are a fan of crops and pasture land there is really nothing to divert your attention, so long drives to Miller and beyond to cover something provided ample opportunity to let your vision drift beyond the fields and concentrate on the road and whatever else required thoughts on a given day.

I’m not saying I figured out life on the back roads of Beadle County, but I got a little bit more insight into how to approach nagging thoughts in the back of my head. Or sometimes just nothing whatsoever. There are times in life where you just have to let the music take over and let your mind go blank.

I still do this from time to time these days, though it looks a bit different. I rarely drive the back roads for no reason any more, but when I do travel places the familiar process of letting my mind drift to where it needs to be persist.

These are times away from the hustle and bustle of life. Times of a steady mind that sometimes dwells on the day’s needs, or letting the mind drift to some other seemingly unimportant moment in time.

Sometimes I’ll take a longer than normal route back to the office from lunch or supper breaks to think in one way or another on some topic bothering me, or just let the audiobook I’m listening to take me away into a different world.

Looking at things that way, it’s not inconceivable to look on time in a car as self therapy where you control the noise around you.

In a world that often seems uncontrolled these days the one thing you can control is your bearing on the horizon, the music providing the soundtrack and windows up or down.