Find Your One Thing
CAMP SOAPBOX
Learn!!!!
by JR Elrod
Ok folks, stop what you are doing for just 7 minutes, please. Grab your cup of coffee and gather around the campfire. Let us talk about finding your one thing. Listen, this will make sense in 7 minutes, I promise.
Ok folks, we are going to start right here. Why am I telling you all this? I am not bragging. Well, not much anyhow.
Listen. We work this job almost 24/7 and 365. We have to have some kind of release. So here is the thing. Everything I have ever done in my life I have done out of sheer boredom. What do you do?
Lately, me, I write books. The Frozen Freight series. A trucking history book. A fraud book too. Hell, I learned most of this just by reading on the internet. I learned to fly when I was young. Loved it then, still do it to this day.
That is who I am. Let me back up and tell you how I got here. There is a point to it. Hang with me.
I learn by doing
I learn daily. Not just about my industry but about a lot of other subjects. I love to learn, and I learn best by doing, not just reading. That is how I was raised. OJT.
I played baseball through high school and college. I learned four years of auto mechanics during high school. I learned to fly planes in high school and got my license the day I turned 16. I learned to jump out of perfectly good airplanes in high school. I learned to work on tractors and other farm implements all through my young life.
Then college. Where I learned the least I have ever learned in my life. I learned business, but I also learned how to party. Bad days there.
Then I went off to the Army, where I learned everything I could possibly learn. After basic and AIT I went off to Germany, where I learned the language and how not to get slapped by the local women. Rednecks in Germany. That was funny.
I was a gunner on an M1 tank. You know why I went for that? Because that is something you cannot do out in the real world. But I learned everything I could about my job and became the best gunner I could be. Not the best in the military. But for me it was the best.
Then I left the Army and whammo. Trucking by sheer accident.
Now let us talk trucking
I learned everything I could about this career that chose me. I learned to back. I learned the different transmissions. The twin boxes. I had already learned the tri boxes, because farm kid.
Gone to jail for speeding. Gone to jail for my bad manners. Rolled a brand new Peterbilt 379 and RGN over on its top. Just bought it and was headed to go get a load in Kansas, blew a steer tire, and rolled that brand new truck wheels up in less than ten seconds. I was ok. The truck and trailer were not.
I have run over the top prosecuting attorney in Denver County’s brand new Cadillac. And he laughed about it, because he had just left the dealership and was headed home to give it to his wife so she would get out of his hair for three weeks and go see her mama.
Almost cost me my marriage more than once because of this job. My kids hated me for a long time because I was always trying to learn. But now my kids are almost just like me, and they actually enjoy learning new things.
My wife Rebecca sometimes hates me. Up at 3am and going to bed at 11pm, always talking about just stuff. She is a very smart woman and she can follow a lot of what I talk about, but then there are times she thinks I am speaking German again.
I am a salty old redneck truck driver who, as a matter of fact, does know about this and that. And you know why? Because I insist on learning it. I did not know how to write a novel. But guess what. I did it.
Ok, let us talk philosophy
Marcus Aurelius once said you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. And also, the best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
Or maybe you like Aristotle. All men by nature desire to know.
Or my personal favorite, from Arthur Schopenhauer. One should use common words to say uncommon things.
That is the why. Now here is the what.
So here is my point
If all you do is shift gears and sleep, what have you accomplished?
What if you took just one hour with the TV off and did something. Learned to play the guitar. Or the banjo. Or found the one thing you have wanted to do all your life, the thing that might excite you, and spent one hour a day doing it.
I promise you, after you have eaten your dinner and you are back in the sleeper laying down, most days it takes a few hours to decompress and relax enough to sleep. That is the time. That is when you just do it, whatever it is.
Maybe it is writing, like mine is right now. Maybe it is yodeling. Yeah, yodeling. Maybe it is finishing that college degree you started and never finished.
Folks, listen. Get out of the drive-sleep-TV mode. It is going to kill you slowly. Find what your thing is and do it. Keep your mind going and off the “omg all I do is drive and sleep.”
I did not know how to write a novel either. Now I have a whole series. Nobody handed me a manual. I sat down and did it. So can you.
One more thing before you go
Ok folks, listen to me. You will hear me plug my books throughout my articles. Hell, you will hear me plug other drivers’ books too. Am I sorry? NOPE!!!!!! Will I keep doing it? YEP!!! Hey, I found my one thing and I am proud of it.
If you have not read my books yet, then hey, maybe that is your one-hour thing at night. Read my book.
And don’t you worry your coffee-soaked, ace-of-a-backer truck driver self about this, but I have an audiobook coming out for Book 1. So maybe your one-hour thing is listening to me drone on. Lol, not really. I paid a guy to read it, because no one, and I mean NO ONE, wants to hear me read.
So here, just below, are the links for my books. Remember AMAZON! You will have a choice of clicks to make once you click these links. REMEMBER AMAZON!!! REMEMBER AMAZON!!! They say if you say it three times, people will remember. There, I did it.
Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.
The Frozen Freight Series by JR Elrod
Book 1 — Frozen Freight: Iron Reach: https://mybook.to/FrozenFreight
Book 2 — Frozen Freight: The Fifth Dot (preorder): https://mybook.to/TheFifthDot
Book 2 — Frozen Freight: The Fifth Dot (preorder): https://mybook.to/TheFifthDot