A funny thing happened on the way to retirement.
For most of my life, I worked only to pay bills. Like a lot of people, I spent years thinking that someday I would have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do.
School, fast food and band camps. The Air Force (another long story) and then construction. Heavy Highway slip form paving – dark to dark day after day. Then it was driving trucks and running the iron rails of the Railroad 24/7. The RR paid for me to go down yonder. It started in my mind as a just get clean, so I didn’t need to panic at the thought of a random pee in this bottle test. Thirty days and back to drinking, but what they said there in the Smoky Mountains started to sink in. I did have a problem and I was it. Clean and sober for three years I found myself asking that Higher Power what he wanted me to do… And that is when an application to work in the county jail showed up. So, I worked my way up to Corporal running the shift and overseeing the inmates. The down and out. The alcoholic drug addicts. I helped some. I would speak to them and try not to speak at them and truly listen. My line of “Jesus sent me to jail.” started many conversations. Then butting heads with the administration and attitudes that were not conducive to team building started to wear on the nerves. Restless I wandered into a casino and on a whim asked about a job in the Security Department. Shift Supervisor is now sliding into retirement.
Someday started showing up. Someday kept gnawing at me…
For decades I would think “I should write a book” and just never get it going. The 40-year party wandering in my own desert kept getting in the way. What began as a few random thoughts and conversations turned into stories. Those stories turned into a town called Destiny. No place special with just some people there. People that existed from other books in my head. Now sober but still perhaps a little on the odd side I dove into a topographical map. Sleepless and possibly even manic (I think I had ADHD before they named it) I found the drainage, the watershed and it just had to be where Destiny would be, Destiny Colorado turned into maps, history, characters, businesses, lakes, creeks, trails, mysteries, and eventually an entire world that seems to grow every week.
The strange part is that none of it was planned.
A year ago, if someone had told me I would own an LLC, have websites, be building a publishing brand, writing science fiction, creating fictional towns, and talking daily about book covers and marketing, I probably would have laughed. Yet here we are.
Destiny Chronicles now has its own place in the world. There are stories, some are fiction. Some are memories. Some are observations about life. Most are a mixture of all three.
An “Autobiofictionography”, as jumbled thoughts converge and coalesce. My brain is wired the way it is, and I sometimes think that it does what it wants as I watch. As if from outside – the alcoholic drug addict run amuck … Sober now he is quite amusing.
I’ve learned that stories don’t always arrive fully formed. Sometimes they start with a creek on a map. Like the creek at grandma’s house way back when. On the lake, when life was easy and happy. Before it all went off in the deep end. Sometimes they begin with a memory from forty years ago. Sometimes it is as simple as last week when someone did this and that. Sometimes they arrive during a quiet morning with a cup of coffee in my “Damn Dam Store” mug or while sitting outside on the Partio watching a storm roll across the peaks.
I’ve also learned that creating something is different than consuming something. For years I read books, watched movies, listened to music, and admired what other people built. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is a unique satisfaction that comes from creating something of your own. Even if only a handful of people see it.
The truth is, I don’t know exactly where all this leads. Maybe Destiny becomes something larger than I imagined. Maybe a cookbook gets published. Maybe the website will grow. Maybe none of it makes a dime. But that’s not really the point anymore. The point is that I’m building something.
Every story, every post, every map, every idea is another brick in the wall. A little piece of creative work that didn’t exist before. Something that might outlive me. Something my family can look back on one day and say, “Yep. That sounds like him.”
So, for now, I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep imagining. I’ll keep building Destiny one story at a time. And who knows? Maybe the best chapters are still ahead out there in the mountains.