Ah, the joys of travelling.
I deal with jet lag as badly as
the next guy. I just so happen to be one of the laziest people you’d have ever
been unfortunate enough to meet. And being as lazy as I am, over the years I
have perfected the art of milking every opportunity I get to stretch my feet
out and plant myself in front of a screen.
A long trip? Heh heh.
So you took two days to recover
from that flight. Wow. Must have been brutal. Me get back after taking the same
trip? You wouldn’t catch me stepping out of the house for a week. Unless mum
threatens to repossess the laptop if I don’t leg it to the store on her whim or
my phone runs out of credit and I’m out of backup recharge cards. Those don’t
count. No, they don’t.
Up to about a couple of months
ago, I used to make this weekly commute every weekend, and each trip would take
roughly three hours. I’d stay overnight Fridays and Saturdays and be back home
by midnight Sunday. You guessed it; I wouldn’t budge out of bed till midday
Tuesday. Sue me, opportunities like that are hard to come by. Especially for
me.
It’s roughly a forty five minute
bus journey from my home to the town, and given the chance, I’d demand time off
for recuperation every time I get home after some time out. But that wouldn’t
work. Simple reason, mum has to make that trip on a regular basis as well, and
she deals with jetlag pretty efficiently, God bless her. I could try pretending
to pant and wheeze my way to my room but she’d call my bluff without skipping a
beat. So in short, I relished the opportunities the weekly commute bestowed
upon my grasping hands.
I have a feeling you are judging
me right now, so be it. Something tells me you are the tiniest bit jealous,
too, for which I pardon your judgments. Okay, yes, I could do much more productive
stuff during that time rather than catching up on beauty sleep. But try looking
at it my way: pretty soon I’m probably going to get a reluctant move into
working life, and tell me, dear readers, when does one get a chance to stay in
bed till 12pm on a Monday morning once you start working? (For the purpose of
the above rhetorical question, please ignore the effects of national holidays)
What I’m trying to say is, I’d
rather have fewer regrets than none if I ever live long enough to need a cane.
And alright, fine, I’ll admit it, that was just a fancy way of saying I was too
lazy to be more productive. There, I said it.
People deal with passing time in
different ways during the slow hours between point A and point B on any journey
that takes more than sixty minutes. A lot of them read, I guess. I used to be
one of them. Heck, I used to never leave home without a book at one point.
Anyway, that whole ‘reading on
the bus/train/car’ thing fizzled out after I started beginning to get nauseous
after a few pages. I read that it’s a common thing, something to do with the
brain getting confused by your eyes fixed on the book and your peripheral
vision telling you that your body is still, while the rest of your senses
scream that you’re hurtling through space at sixty miles an hour. Motion
sickness messed up with my favorite travelling pastime.
It was roughly four years ago
that I started writing my first story. That wasn’t a planned thing; I just sat
there with the pen and wrote whatever came out. I remember tearing off a sheet
every so often because the story just kept meandering off somewhere and sticking
itself deep into some random metaphorical rut. Halfway through this grueling
task, I suddenly began to start thinking about where it was going, and where I
wanted it to go. That’s when I first began to plan ahead.
The story still ended up crappy,
but it was way better than what it might have been had I taken the impromptu
approach till the very end. What does all this have to do with travelling,
you’re probably wondering. Quite a bit. See, at that point, not only did I
realize what I really wanted to do with life (cue “Lion King” theme music) but it
also gave me something to do that I still do, to this very day.
I plan my stories ahead.
And I do it while travelling.
(Wide grin)
I literally get my best ideas
when I’m on the road. Right hand side window if possible, headphones on, cue
action music, and then I relax and watch the swords clash and the arrows fly in
my mind. Seriously, try it if you haven’t. Being an author is fun. And work
never feels like work if you’re enjoying yourself.
I agree with whatever way you
find to pass time when you travel. Yakking away with friends, eating, reading,
music, origami, trying to ignore the obnoxious person who keeps constantly
annoying you in the next seat, trying not to be conspicuous while staring at
the person of the opposite gender who happens to be facing you from somewhere
in the vicinity, whatever. But just once, try giving it a go. Sit back, relax,
and think about a story YOU would like to write, characters YOU would like to
see come to life.
After all, who can forget that
J.K. Rowling thought out the plots of all seven books while on a train from
Manchester to London? It took her four hours to come up with Harry Potter. Who
knows what you can come up with?
Well, okay, fine, it might be a
bit distracting when you’re in the latter of the examples given above. But
willpower, friends, willpower. (Yeah, right. Pffffft. Go get back to your
staring, pal. I’m sure the next Lord of the Rings can wait another day)
Sigh. I confess, I agree with
you. Most of what you just read up there was a pile of tripe that lead from one
detour to another to finally get to a point that could have been cleared up in
a few paragraphs. But some wise man once said that it isn’t the destination
that makes it worthwhile; it’s the journey. Interpret that quote whichever way
you like, but I’m taking that opportunity to justify writing over seven hundred
words to get to a point one paragraph long.
It isn’t the destination. It’s
the journey. Think on that quote. It may just change the way you look at life. It
did for me.
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