I've been writing a book

Several years ago I did the Trans Siberian Railway from Beijing to Moscow with my dad and sister. At the time I said I wanted to write a book about it. I’d always wanted to be a travel writer and this seemed like an excellent opportunity to write about a big trip along a famous route. It started with a name: Set Your Watch to Moscow Time. Then a bunch of notes during the trip.

I’ve been “writing” that book ever since. I did write out a first draft by hand and then typed it up. I printed it out and marked up various notes that I carried around with me.

Mostly I’ve been thinking about it and trying to get it together enough to work on it. To actually set aside time, to begin.

One of the things I find myself doing a lot since getting diagnosed with ADHD is revisiting things I started and then never quite got around to finishing, I spend a lot of time digging through what old versions of myself got done on projects and trying to figure out how to actually finish them. I have two essays and a book all based off of stuff I started and never finished that are on my mind, that make it to the top tier of to write stuff.

The essays won’t be ready to work on until I find some photos so they aren’t my focus currently. Set Your Watch is. It feels good to finally be working on it, to be finding a pace and routine that allows me to get it done. Right now the goal is an hour a week. So far I’ve made more progress in the last three weeks than I have in the last three years.

It feels dauting and impossible. Ridiculous even. Why keep going with this project? Why commit to this effort?

The answer goes back to who I was as a teenager, the decision that I wanted to write a book. I have other stuff I could work on but it’s all in the gathering/research phase. It’s not in the edit the thing you already spent ages writing phase.

I want to start this thing that I finished. I want to learn how to write a book and this seems like as good a chance as any. Whatever I pick I have to say no to a lot of other things I could be doing.

It feels strange to be working on this project because I am convening with so many different versions of myself. The one that planned the trip, went on it, wrote the draft out by hand, typed it, edited it. It’s been almost a decade since I started. It will be longer than that if it ever gets published. It’s weird.

I don’t re-read books but I’m placing holds on the ones I read back in those days. I wonder how they’ll feel now on the other side of all these years?

That is the end and there is so much more

I just achieved something, something big, something exciting, something I've been working on for a long time.

I finished typing up the first draft of a book about doing the TransSib with my dad and sister that I wrote in several notebooks when I was living in Vancouver before. I had trouble typing it out so I wrote it by hand.

My goal was to finish the written draft before leaving for Scotland and I did.

I left it to sit and age. To give it time and because I figured I'd be too busy what with a one year masters program.

Then I did bits and pieces since getting back.

It's easy to find reasons not to deal with it. But I want to do this, it's at the top of my list of projects.

I'm at a turning point in my life and I've been thinking about what it's important to me to do over the next few months. This is a big one.

So I sat down and I did it. Now I have to sit down and edit it until it's something worth reading.

This is how it ends right now:

“We ate dinner at a chain restaurant outside the station. Our food was cold and the service was bad. We returned home and packed out stuff one last time.

•

We got up around 5:30 am to get ready and finish packing. We made the 7:00 am Aeroexpress. It leaves every half hour and we got there five minutes before the next departure. We ran and made it but there were no seats left. We got to stand amongst the luggage.

It did give us more time at the airport, not that it really mattered. My flight left after theirs. I got to look forward to connecting in Stockholm before visiting a friend in Paris.

We had some time before their flight so we got coffee.

Then I went and bought food with my remaining roubles and waited.

I should write a better conclusion but I just don’t know what to say.

•

It was weird to be without my father and sister after all these weeks. It was also nice to be alone.

We’d travelled # kilometres together. I hadn’t come out of crisis or anything more than because my sister wanted to do it.

I’d miss the peaceful rustling of rails and unfolding of the scenery outside the window.

Paris awaited. Then life. My real life. I would need to find a job and to try to aswer that nagging question of what exactly I was doing with my life.

Over the next year as I started writing this and then typed it up I realized I didn’t really know the answers to those questions. The important thing was to do things even if the only good reason was that you wanted to and to learn to live in the moment and just be. I certainly don’t remember any Russian so that’s not what I got out of it.”

It's funny typing those words and thinking of all the things I've done since I wrote but how I still feel exactly the same. Looking for a job, uncertain about the future. Not really sure how to answer the dreaded question. "so what do you do?" I still feel like I'm drifting and seeking. Older, wiser, still not really sure what I'm doing.

Anyways, I might go out for a walk and see if any convenience stores are selling ice cream. It seems like a fitting way to celebrate this moment.