nerd’s eye view

Next, Please?

December 7, 2007 – 10:30 pm | by nerd's eye view

When I was still walking circles around the idea of writing for a living, my friend M introduced me to his pal B, a Real Travel Writer. B had written a book and had bunches of stories published in magazines. In addition to the classic “You wanna write a book? Well, write the damn book already!” story, B told me something else that I find myself thinking of as I lug myself to the keyboard every morning. I can’t remember where he was flying back from - some plush assignment. The magazine had assigned a photographer to the gig as well. “We’re sitting on the plane and the photographer is totally relaxed. Why? His work was pretty much done. But mine was still ahead of me - I had writing to do.”

I get up early, always have. It’s newsworthy event if I sleep past 8am - my most productive hours are between 6 and 11 in the morning. Combined with the fact that we’d been shifted to Hawaii time, three hours earlier than Seattle, it was no problem for me to sort through the hundreds of photos we took - I estimate upwards of 500 - in about three days. With that done, there was nothing left to do but sit down and write.

To the aggravation of many, I have no trouble writing. So I’m not currently worried that I won’t get my manuscript done in time. I’m gnashing my teeth a little over the intense details, but that’s just normal work stuff. The problem is that while I’m chained to the keyboard, I miss being underway, even in that rushed way. I miss the “on assignment” part of the work. I miss shooting dozens of photos before noon. I can’t take time to do anything but work until I’ve finished meeting my writing obligations, but the writing is also weirdly in the way of things I’d like to be doing. I have a peculiar kind of culture shock, one that’s caused by the shift of going from being a full time observer to a full time documenter of things observed.

I miss the Hawaiian sunshine, that’s for sure, but I miss using my eyes more. I miss those random conversations about how the Wal-Mart was built in spite of the sacred burial ground found during the first excavations, about how there almost no Hawaiian owned hotels, about how the Super Ferry is a problem because it’s all about making it possible for people to easily move Hawaii’s natural resources from one place to another - which is a really un-Hawaiian philosophy. I miss the excuse to have those conversations. It’s not just Hawaii, though, it’s that state of mind that you get into when you’re doing that sort of work. I won’t go all hokey and say it’s the “zone” - plus, it’s not the “zone”, it’s crazy tiring. But I miss the work all the same.

I have a slightly different point of view than B does on the end of travel. Yeah, I have piles of work to do. But that’s not what was bumming me out on the plane ride home. It’s that it’s over. I gotta finish this assignment not just because I have an obligation to do so, but because I need to turn my efforts to finding the next one.

Thank God I have those plane tickets to Saigon.