The Impossible (Book) Dream

In 1965, Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion wrote the song “The Impossible Dream” for the musical, The Man of la Mancha. I was seven years old at the time, but I remember it like it was yesterday. The idea of an impossible dream entered my mind: having one, pursuing one, attaining one. My parents owned an album of the musical with recordings by Richard Kiley, a great baritone.

So, I decided, many years before puberty, that one day I would be a baritone. And this too came to pass, although I still can’t carry a tune in a bucket. The point is that dreams may often seem impossible, but we never know whether we can reach them until we try. And I don’t mean a half-hearted, brief try. I mean a real commitment, an enduring effort, an all-or-nothing life quest.

The first part of my quest revealed itself in my teens. I would have to leave my home in Indiana and go far away. Where, I did not know. But off I went to France for my junior year of college and I was hooked. I absolutely loved going to other countries, learning the language, and exploring cultures.

Fast forward to my 20s, when I joined the Peace Corps and went to Morocco, in North Africa. This completely blew my mind. I knew that it was only for two years, and began to wonder what to do next. I made the mistake of looking at a map of Africa (in those days, they were printed and we put them on the walls) and wondered how long it would take to work my way around it.

Big mistake! I tried to do it and it took me 40 years. That’s how I spent my life. And it’s why I wrote a book, titled My Two Centuries in Africa. I started in the 1980s, during the last decades of the 20th century. I then continued to 2020 and realized I had been in Africa for two different centuries -- hence the title.

If you’re wondering what I was doing, I decided, due to my Peace Corps work, to go into public health. This is the opposite of clinical medicine in two ways. In clinical medicine, a doctor sees one sick patient at a time and makes a diagnosis. Also, the doctor makes a lot of money, which makes him (or her) feel better, even if the patient does not always end up feeling better.

This hints at the second difference, which is that while doctors make a lot, people in public health do not make money. Trust me on this one, people. We deal with population-wide health problems. Instead of working with one patient at a time, we design and implement programs to benefit everyone. For example, we would organize vaccination campaigns to prevent COVID.

So, having figured out how not to make a living, that’s what I did for 40 years, and I loved it. My work took me all over Africa, from the North to West Africa, then Southern Africa, then East Africa, and finally in 2018-19, Central Africa. In all, I worked and/or lived in 29 of the 54 countries in Africa.

But who cares? Right? (I know, some of you are probably like, Africa? What?)

It’s a fair question. I mean, we all have busy lives, what with work, and COVID, and paying the bills, and being married and raising kids and all the rest of life.

So, who has the time and energy for Africa? It’s far away and most of us don’t know anybody there. We can safely ignore it and nothing bad happens. Africa is not like China or Russia; there is no chance Africa will ever invade America.

So why would anybody want to read the memoir of an unknown 64-year-old guy who spent his life running around Africa? I apologize. I forgot to get famous before writing the book. It was on my to-do list and I forgot to check off that box. I am always forgetting things, just like I forgot to pick a more lucrative career.

On top of this, everyone told me from the start that it would be impossible to get people to buy the book and read it. They told me it was a waste of time and money. Almost no one makes money by writing a book anymore. The problem is that when someone tells me a thing is impossible, I hear music.

The music I hear is “The Impossible Dream.” In my head, I am singing it on a Broadway stage to wild applause. Multiple encores. The fans just want more.

So, since I was doing something impossible anyway, I figured, let’s raise the stakes. Let’s go all in. I gave up my career in public health, and decided to try my luck at being an author. I figured out pretty quickly that I would have to live simply and economically, so I took early retirement. That’s what I live on now. In order to survive, I gave up my lease, and put everything in storage. No monthly rent payment, no utilities, no insurance. So where do I live now?

Don’t laugh. I live in a van. Yeah, I know, a 64-year-old man, living in a van? It’s ridiculous. It’s crazy. I must be out of my mind. Correct. And I really love it. I feel free for the first time since I was 20. My kids are all grown and they have their own places. I asked them if it was OK for me to run away from home and they said yes.

In fact, they helped me pack. I got a van and headed out west.

So, six months later, I'm still living in the van. I got a dog at a shelter in Denver. His name is Mr. Bones. We spent the summer traveling west to San Francisco, then north to Seattle and then all the way across the northern U.S. and Canada to Maine, before heading back to the D.C. area by Labor Day to see my kids, and a few friends, like some of my old cycling buddies.

So, am I famous now? No. Am I rich yet? No. I didn’t sell any copies of the first edition, and I realized I would need to get an editor and do a rewrite. In case you don’t know what a rewrite is, that’s when you give a person you don’t even know (the editor) your most prized possession, your book, which contains the sweat of your brow, all your secrets, and all your dreams.

The editor proceeds to pull out a big pair of scissors and starts mercilessly cutting your book to pieces. While this is going on, you have to sit by and watch, helplessly, as your book is hemorrhaging words all over the floor. And the editor says, in a steely voice, I’m doing this for your own good. You’ll thank me someday. The way your parents used to say that before punishing you.

So, here we are. It’s almost Christmas, and the new book is not quite ready to release yet. But it has a great new cover, and I’m getting excited once again. Fingers crossed. I still don’t have an agent or a publisher, but what I have is more important. I have my dream. My impossible dream. And I’m living it. Every day. My life is full of hope and heartbreaks, a regular rollercoaster

Some days I’m up, some days I’m down. Sometimes it happens in the same day. I go from an amazing rush to an almost unbearable feeling of agony. But then the music starts, and I hear a Sinatra song, “Pick Yourself Up.” Dust yourself off. And start all over again. “Nothing's impossible, I have found, for when your chin is on the ground …”

So, I think that’s enough for today. Nice to meet you. If you want to stick around and find out what happens next, be my guest. I’ll be posting weekly updates on my adventures traveling with Mr. Bones in the mini-campervan. And you might even see my book in a local bookstore. That’s my dream.

Who knows, I might be in your town next. I’ll let you know.