The Journey (continued)
I found a truck driving school and learned how to drive an 18-wheeler. I heard about a place where I could get a job and moved a thousand miles from the place where I had lived all my life to go to work as a truck driver. That was back when there were hardly any women driving trucks.
Sometimes it amazed me that I had done it. You might think that I was daring and brave. But that wasn’t it. I was just more afraid of my life as it was than of any danger out there.
I saw a way to get out of my rut into a different one, one that looked more interesting. And it certainly was! Anybody can see that driving a truck would be fun. Remember how competent you felt when you first drove a car alone? Well, imagine what it’s like when your vehicle weighs 40 tons. But there were other things I didn’t expect. That the whole country would become like my own neighborhood. That I would talk to so many people and see so many people I knew driving coast to coast, because we were traveling the same routes.
Maybe you, too, have done something exciting, exotic, and unexpected? Strange how it affects you, isn’t it? No matter how much you research, prepare, and think you’ve learned everything about it, there are things that you can’t know, that people can’t tell you, unless you’ve been there.
That’s what happens. All the planning makes you think that you, the person you are, can do this. But you can’t. Because in doing something so far from your norm, you end up discovering more of yourself.
And when you come out of your rut, even to go over into another one, you stand on an high open plain, at least for a moment, and you can truly see that the possibilities are endless. And you know that there can be so much more to the journey and to life.
Sometimes it amazed me that I had done it. You might think that I was daring and brave. But that wasn’t it. I was just more afraid of my life as it was than of any danger out there.
I saw a way to get out of my rut into a different one, one that looked more interesting. And it certainly was! Anybody can see that driving a truck would be fun. Remember how competent you felt when you first drove a car alone? Well, imagine what it’s like when your vehicle weighs 40 tons. But there were other things I didn’t expect. That the whole country would become like my own neighborhood. That I would talk to so many people and see so many people I knew driving coast to coast, because we were traveling the same routes.
Maybe you, too, have done something exciting, exotic, and unexpected? Strange how it affects you, isn’t it? No matter how much you research, prepare, and think you’ve learned everything about it, there are things that you can’t know, that people can’t tell you, unless you’ve been there.
That’s what happens. All the planning makes you think that you, the person you are, can do this. But you can’t. Because in doing something so far from your norm, you end up discovering more of yourself.
And when you come out of your rut, even to go over into another one, you stand on an high open plain, at least for a moment, and you can truly see that the possibilities are endless. And you know that there can be so much more to the journey and to life.
posted by Marianne at 7:52 PM
2 Comments:
Marianne - I used to want to be a truck driver. I thought it would be so cool to "woman-handle" that huge vehicle, and to travel the whole wide country.
Then I learned more about it, met some truck drivers and their families, and now I'm glad I never went that route. Sitting on my butt for hours and days and being away from my family...kinda lost its exotic appeal.
What was it like for you?
It depends on how much you love to drive and how much you learn to love losing yourself in the space/time warp that you pass into when you settle in for a thousand-mile trip and focus your gaze on the far horizon.
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