Preface - Full Steam Ahead

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I've taken the train. Can't say I recall the last time I had to purchase a ticket for travel but it's rather refreshing, if you ask me. A free lift by airplane could've easily been accepted from one of the many generous offers for passes from former coworkers or procured on my own through... illegitimate means. Let's just say the days of the charming confidence man didn't die with Abignale - but I digress. The railways are simpler, humbling and the pace suited me - necessary even. The setting and time frame was conducive to what I had neglected for so long: reflection.

At nearly 24 hours of locomotion, I had not only the time to think but, more importantly, the self-justication. Somewhere along the way between adolence and adulthood, a personal philosophy developed akin to "doing first and thinking later" - or not at all, which was more often the case. "Leap First" was the moniker of a journal I kept which chronicled those ideallic years. It ended after a leap I still question if I had ever recovered from but despite shunning the pen and paper, the motto permeated deeply enough to become second nature. There was no more time to meditate or consolidate for it was a hop, skip, and a jump to the next best thing every moment of every day and therein lay my Achilles' heel. Progress was an obsession and if I was not moving forward, I was wasting my breath even at the expense of the bigger picture of this so-called life. When readers asked why I stopped writing my reason was always this: why spend half your life writing about the other half you managed to live? It's still a damn good question. Why not live fully so that someone else could be inspired to write about your life, eh? Well, no one's writing any biographies on the self-proclaimed Bonne Dorrello just yet so I might as well fill in the gaps in the meantime. Thus, this was how I resolved to keep moving forward yet find time to reflect and subsequently write: I'm on a train, riding my own biography - pun absolutely intended.

Now, I'm doing so not because I just want to go back to ending my days in Doogie Howser-esque fashion but because too much as happened in the last six years without much thought. They have been driven by momentum - the effect of exposure, networking, once in a lifetime opportunities, movies, inspiring individuals, peer pressure, and dare I admit, the fear of ceasing my sprint to let the growing boulder of dismissed praises and shame alike to catch up. I've been chugging away like a runaway train, eventually derailing from the tracks I had laid down growing up and crashing at an airport a week into my 27th birthday when I realized just how shallow my life had become.

"Where are you going, sir," asked the ticket agent. Having flown like a ping pong ball back and forth across the nation so much, it's not uncommon for a flight attendant to momentarily forget where they were let alone where they were going. Instead of cycling through the endless three-letter airport codes in my head, I blanked. Then, in that awkward silence the boulder I had been outrunning took the opportunity to sack me right there and then...

(Since where I'm going is more essential right now than where I've been I'll spare the exhaustive list about the last six years. They'll need to be documented at some point, perhaps along the way, but even as I write I am only delaying this overdue quest.)

Stunned, as if St. Peter was recanting the events of my adult life in my mind, leaving me ashamed and unsatisfied, I managed to reply to the agent a perplexed, "I... Don't know," before turning around and solemnly quitting my job. I succumbed to a week of depression and the only reason I could think of was this: I wasn't doing what I wanted to do for myself. In retrospect, the older I became the less evident was my signature in the wake of my accomplishments and failures.

For example I never wanted to take on a job while in school, let alone work for an airline, but I wanted to be there for my brother and good friend who did. Next a driver's license was required to even apply so I bit the bullet and took a crash course in learning to drive before the interview. Down the road, when I found the prime opportunity to bow out of the industry, with initial reluctance, I entered into a long distance relationship which needed the flight benefits to be maintained - so right back into the airport I went. When I tried to back out of the airline life again to earnestly explore other means of seeing the miss, Virgin stepped into the ring as a carrier and I talked myself into joining the bandwagon once again. As fun and lucrative as it was, it wasn't exactly the career path I imagined in my youth.

There was a time when practically everything I did was self-inspired and not driven by what suited the moment. For fear of joining the masses in quiet desperation, as Thoreau would say, I've forced myself to get back on track by retreating from the hustle and bustle I created for myself with a pilgrimage.

I think I subconsciously always knew this undertaking needed to be done sooner or later. Whenever I wasn't putting on a hell of a show for the cabin I was found in the galley reading memoirs about 19th century adventurers making their way to Tibet. I took an interest in rereading literature like Walden and Don Quixote. I had been rewatching movies like Into the Wild, One Week, The Motorcycle Diaries, The Way, and The World's Fastest Indian with a new affinity. What they all had in common was stopping at the cusp of a life of relative success and going on a personal journey to find out what it is they really want to do with our lives before settling down.

That's what I've set out to do. Call it what you will; a pilgrimage, road therapy, a quest for an epiphany, or even a coward's escape. I have not resigned to sitting in a room philosophizing about how to live life but rather I'm saddling up to search for it. Where am I going and for how long I'm leaving to the wind. Who knows? This could be much ado about nothing but there is truly only one way to find out.

Just as I thought, this train ride has been most therapeutic. I met charming characters like the gentle giant who reminded me of that fellow from Of Mice and Men. Or the simple country boy longingly looking at and sharing pictures of son he had yet to meet. There was even an enthusiastic young man - younger than me - who had just left Seattle with a couple hundred dollars in his pocket and the shirt on his back to "figure his life out." We didn't talk much but he got the impression that he wasn't alone in that regard.

Surprisingly the ride did not seem long enough to give me all the time to think but this was just a prelude. Another steel steed awaited me at the end of the tracks to take it from here.