On a Lonely Road

The plan was to write a book, promote it for a year, then sit back and enjoy life while the money rolls in…

Are you laughing? You should be. Everyone told me that virtually no one ever makes any money writing a book. Why should it be any different for me? Yes, of course, I know that. But, like every silly, starry-eyed romantic, I secretly believed that in my case, somehow, lightning would strike, in a very good way.

Don’t we all secretly believe in something silly which we know will probably never happen? We might get the lucky lottery ticket. We might be the one millionth customer and win the fabulous prize. The tenth caller who gets the concert tickets. The guy with the metal detector who finds the gold coins.

The guy with the metal detector on the beach

Sigh. Well, time is up, folks, the party is over, and reality has set in. People are not going to buy my book. No one will even know I wrote one. How would the average person ever find out that a nobody from Indiana wrote a book about spending his adult life in Africa? And if they did, why would they care? I can’t think of a reason why the should. It would require an utterly implausible series of lucky coincidences for my book to get any recognition.

But sometimes, instead of getting what you thought you wanted, you get something else, something unexpected, that may be even better. I gave up a boring, conventional life, sitting at home, holding down the fort, waiting for Godot, in exchange for a new life on the road, exploring America, going places, meeting people, and seeing fabulous sights.

But isn’t it lonely, just me and the dog, traveling around? Ask Joni Mitchell. She wrote about traveling:

“I am on a lonely road and/I am traveling, traveling, traveling/Looking for something, what can it be?”

The year was 1971. At the height of her fame, she released her Blue album. I was only 13 and had no idea who Joni Mitchell was. Within a few years, I would discover her and she would blow my mind. I spent 40 years living and working conventionally. I bought and sold three homes. I had had enough. The pandemic was the once-in-a-lifetime event that upends our way of living and it upended mine.

Am I lonely on the road? Ask my dog, Mr. Bones, my buddy, my constant companion. He is the best conversationalist I ever met. He listens to every word I say, mainly because he’s hoping one of them will be something he wants to hear: “Would like a treat” “Time for dinner!” or “Let’s go for a walk.” The answer is, I get lonely occasionally on the road, but I got lonely a lot more often sitting at home.

When we talk, our dogs mostly just hear “blah blah blah”

Also, I am finally doing what I was meant to do, writing. Why didn’t I start writing as a young man, knowing that it was my dream? Many reasons. I was afraid to fail. I lacked confidence in myself. Everyone said that you can’t make a living as a writer. I wanted to be responsible, sensible.

I found a career in public health that fulfilled me, but I never stopped writing. I just didn’t do very much of it. I never tried to publish anything. I wrote silly things to entertain my family and friends. Now that I am writing, the words keep me company. Strange, isn’t it? How words are companions?

I’ve joined a couple of writing groups that give us weekly prompts and we have to respond to them. I’ve written about everything from déjà vu to pandemonium to spirituality to a list of favorite songs. I didn’t know I could write fiction, but when I ask my brain to create a plot, setting, and characters, it is more than happy to do so. The characters actually take on a life of their own and write the stories. I just sit back and watch them go. I like to spend a weekend with them so we get better acquainted.

I usually write a humorous piece, but occasionally my characters turn out to be bad guys and they go and kill someone. It’s kind of alarming that my mind can go dark like that, so, please don’t annoy me. I won’t kill anyone in reality, but I might dispatch you in a rather unpleasant way in a short story. No one will ever know and the police can’t touch me. No one ever goes to jail for imagining a killing.

Speaking of death and dying, I felt so bad when the submersible, Titan, imploded this week, killing everyone on board as it was trying to reach the wreck of the Titanic. I had to ask myself, why did people want to go 13,000 below the sea to reach the most tragic, infamous shipwreck of all time?

It occurred to me that the Titanic is an apt metaphor for my book, which is currently sinking fast into the icy depths of the “ocean of books no one will ever read” on Amazon. The last time I looked, it had gone from #200,000 in sales when I released it, in May, to around #2.5 million in just over a month.

My book has sunk to the bottom of an ocean of unread books on Amazon

A local public radio affiliate did a program of songs the other day about the Titanic. David Holt’s song got to me. “God move, God moves, God moves, on the water, everybody better run and pray.” I suppose he means that we should not tempt fate, and that the power of nature is unimaginable.

It has occurred to me lately, in my travels in western Virginia and North Carolina, that we humans live on a thin crust of dry land sandwiched between an ocean of air and an ocean of water. We look down into the ocean and up into the sky, but we have never fully understood either of them. We never will.

I have had time to sit and observe the wind whipping through the trees on a mountaintop, and they wave and sway just like seaweed in an ocean current. How curious. I never thought of this before. If I spend enough time on the road, I will continue to think of new things because I often do new things.

So, the book is a bust, and I’m unlikely to make a dime despite all my hard work, but that’s OK. I had to write it, and I had to go one the road, because I had to become a writer and contemplate life.

Contemplate life sometime. It’s worth it.

Like a Rolling Stone

Tommy, can you hear me?