Considering my profession, I might well have the most unusual combination of skills on the planet. I've never met anyone quite like me: a trucker-writer-philosopher. I hope one day, the order changes to writer-philosopher-trucker, or that anything pertaining to commercial transportation be dropped from the title all-together.
Trucking is a wonderful job at times. If you're ahead of schedule and trucking through the Sierra Nevada range, for example, it's a heaven consisting of unparalleled freedom and beauty. There's no boss looking over your shoulder and no one reminding you of their high expectations of you.
At other times, it's the new American slavery - going where you don't want to, away from home as much as 4 to 10 weeks at a time in some cases, and unable to accomplish anything of convenience.
You can't just quit your job when you're 2000 miles from home and, anytime you use a bathroom or take a shower, it's more a public than private affair.
But that time alone, behind the wheel, offers the opportunity to do a lot of thinking. And that's part of what this blog is about. Thinking, reasoning, dreaming, and knowing.
It is an overdone cliche now, but life is a road, and thinking and dreaming can take us to the destinations along it. You know, "the journey called life," and all that. Mine has been filled with a lot of bumps and pot holes. But, like most, I always dream of reaching a much better place than I am now.
This, actually, is one of those better places - the blog. Several friends and family members have suggested I start a blog, but when the last suggestion was received by a minister of the Christian faith, under the roof of a church, it occurred to me that the pattern had become so obvious, I would do poorly to ignore it.
I've had some minor publishing successes in the past. I won a writing contest for a city newspaper out west that allowed me to publish six paid opinion columns, I had an epic poem published in on online literary journal, and I had two opinion columns from my college paper reprinted in a major Chinese newspaper, one of them about a time I was stranded in freezing weather on a mountain pass...in a semi-truck.
However, though my profession has shaped and molded me, I am so much more than my job, and hope this blog will be broad in scope. I imagine much of what I write might be in opinion column format since that is mode with which I've become most familiar.
Ultimately, my goal is to entertain, inform, and serve others through my writing. And, of course, enjoy doing it.
So, it is my dear wish, dear reader, that you are entertained, informed, and served, by everything I write.
Thank you,
DTH
