It took me the first few decades of my life to figure out what my child self already seemed to know: I have always wanted to be a traveler. The first thing I can remember really wanting to be as a kid was a train engineer. Unlike most people who look at a train crossing as something that gets in their way on their way to somewhere else, I didn’t mind it when the railroad gates came down and the red lights started blinking because it meant I’d get to see a train. In those slower times, if the gates were down but the train hadn’t arrived yet, sometimes my father would get out of the car and take me right up to the gate so we could get a close view of the engine. Almost all the time, when we waved, the engineer would wave back, assuming he hadn’t waved first.
I wasn’t a trainspotter per se; although I liked the innards-shaking diesel rumble and had the fascination with big machines that most kids have at that age, that wasn’t the appeal of it to me. Instead, what I was always fascinated with was where they were going, where they had been, what was in those rail cars, the cities they’d traveled from and were going to. Although I wouldn’t have phrased it this way back then (I was tennish, plus or minus a couple of years), it was the ephemerality of two travelers passing each other for a brief moment, neither of which knew where the other had been or was going.
Of the many train companies, the Chessie System livery was my favorite:
I liked it so much I had a t-shirt with the logo on it, and I even wore it to school. I knew it didn’t make me cool then, but I didn’t care. It was what I liked, so it was what I wore. It would be a long, long time before I would understand how valuable that attitude would be because it would be decades before I started to write seriously.
When you’re a creative, you’re different. You weren’t born different; almost all children are naturally creative. We start becoming less and less creative as we start caring more about what other people think than we do about what we ourselves think. To be creative, you have to create. Sounds simple enough, but the catch that lies within that is that your world is a little different than those who “outgrew” playing make-believe. There are things still in your world that have long ago left the world of others. Those things you’ve still allowed to stay inside you, that curiosity, that uniqueness, is your strength, but it’s also the thing that makes you different. People don’t like people who are different. If you care about that, your art dies. Your writing, your music, your painting, your whatever it is you do that others don’t dies unburied and unremembered by anyone but yourself, if you ever take the time to remember who you once were.
When you create something, you’re making something up. You’ve made something that only exists for you. It’s different from everything else because if it’s the same, you’ve done a poor job of being creative, haven’t you? It takes courage to hold something in your head that isn’t like anything you know, and even more to hold it out for others to see.
I lost myself in the world of offices for a while. I’ve worked in factories, restaurants, and 9-5 cubicle gigs. All the while, I never lost that sense of a traveler. I never lost my fascination with any mode of travel: ships, trains, old VW microbuses and well-used campers, planes… if it could take me somewhere else, I was into it. About fifteen years ago, I took my weekend hobby of flying and turned it into a career.
So I never did manage to be a train engineer, but I’m an airline pilot instead. That’ll do. I’ve had breakfast in the snows of northern Maine, watched the sun rise over a misty Mount Washington, and been in sunny Florida in time for a late lunch. I’ve seen sunsets that last an hour while flying west and sunrises that happen in no time at all flying east. I’ve gone 2,000 miles in less time than a shift in my old office would have taken for me to go zero feet and I didn’t have to drive myself to and from work to do it because hotels have van drivers. I’ve looked down from 39,000 feet on lightning a mile below me, taken organs across states, seen two dozen fireworks shows within an hour on July 4th, and—my favorite part—taken almost 200,000 travelers like me from where they were to where they want to be.
But way back when, when I wanted to be a train engineer, there was something else I enjoyed doing: writing. I didn’t know I was any good at it; it was just something I did because I read so much and with so much going in, something had to come out. I didn’t think anything of it until I won a best story prize for my school, which went on to win 3rd place in the county. Then I wanted to be a train engineer who was a writer. I figured there had to be plenty of time to do both, right?
The writing part died off slowly over the years. I wrote some in high school, but never tried to get anything published. Some in college, too, but a little less, although I did manage to get a few things published here and there. Eventually it turned into years where I hadn’t written anything just because I wanted to. It’s the way life goes. Everything else happens, so you don’t happen.
About five years ago, I realized I have exactly what every aspiring writer dreams about having, wishes for, and whose lack they blame for not having actually written. Half the month, I’m in a hotel room all by myself. Nice and quiet, no interruptions. Nothing I have to do (or can do, considering I’m hundreds of miles from home). Peace and a laptop: a writer’s dream.
So I started hammering something out. Just for fun, just for me. It wasn’t going to be published, so I could have as much fun as I wanted. And then, five years and fourteen revisions later, it’s coming out in fall 2025 as Ride On. An actual novel, real words and everything.
The career I ended up with led me to the creative place that had never left me although I had left it. When I found that space again, I also found that writing is like an instrument: it’s easy to play around, but hard work to make it worth listening to. I found that I can be funny and loving, weird and beautiful, sometimes all at the same time. I get to travel through words now. I get to make up people that are worth caring about even though they never existed and set them in beautiful places (like Sedona, AZ and Route 66) that I don’t live in and see what they do there and what they say to each other. Sometimes they’re weirder than I am and other times they have more sense than I do.
Let yourself find your own group of people who are fake because you made them up, not fake because they’re all too real. You’re cleared for takeoff.
I’ll end with an an excerpt from Ride On that is a bit of an homage to a dream that fortunately never came true:
They pulled up to the train station that had been converted into a railroad museum. The building was strongly Southwestern-styled with off white and brownish stucco topped with red tile. The real-life version had a wing on the west side of it that made it into the shape of an L. The virtual version was truncated on that side, making the building more symmetrical. Nonetheless, the arches over the windows and the distinctive entrance were identical.
Karl said, “On first look, I can see why you didn’t find anything. This looks totally ordinary, although nicely executed.”[Richard said,] “I gave it way more than a first look. I’ve been over every square foot out here and inside.”
Karl looked excited. “Does it have one of those train simulator things inside with the big computer screens and the controls and you get to pretend you’re an engineer?”
“Yeah, I played it for a few minutes to make sure there wasn’t some message there. It was pretty fun. They rigged the controls up out of a real train and everything.”
“Ooh! Did it let you control the cars in back?”
“No, why?”
“Too bad. I’ve always wanted to simulate being a hobo.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. They’ve got plane simulators and car simulators and even big rig simulators, but all of those just let you pretend you’re in a boring transportation cocoon. They all focus on how you get there and completely ignore why you might want to get there in the first place. No one ever seems to want to let you stop and pretend you’re actually doing neat things in strange places.”
“Isn’t that kind of what we’ve been doing?”
“Maybe if you’d have let me talk you into towing that box car.”
“I’m not Eddy Merckx for crying out loud.”
“But wouldn’t it be cool if there was a game where you went around the Dust Bowl with a bindlestiff’s bag over your shoulder getting points for finding tins of beans and deciphering those chalk hobo code messages?”
“We’re already doing that. Your forehead is covered in dust and sweat, you insisted on bringing beans in the tote, and instead of chalk we have tablets and cell phones.”
“Yeah, but what if you had to dodge the train police and you regenerate your health and stamina bars by telling stories around the campfire to other hobos at night?”
Richard shrugged. “Already done. I-40, state patrol, hospital up the road for a camp. Besides, a game is boring without a boss fight.”
“Boss fights are boring.”
“Still, what kind of game would anyone play if it’s all wandering around aimlessly? You have to be searching for something big at the end.”
“Maybe you could go around finding parts to upgrade your can opener and had to level it up into some super-mecha Swiss Army knife before going into the final duel.”
“You bought one of those at that tourist trap in Albuquerque, remember?”
“Oh yeah, I guess I did. The one with Bugs Bunny on the side.”
“Right. What would a hobo boss even look like anyway?”
“I don’t know. Work with me here. I’m talking, not thinking.”
“Then close your mouth and open your eyes. You’re living the dream. Right here, right now.”
I'd love to hear from you!