About Cowardly Explorers

Post 1922:

Sensible people consider their careers. Their dogs. How much they’re paying for car and dental insurance. Sensible people don't search places they can’t possibly understand.

This is why I’ve always loved explorers. No one is more interesting to me than a person who decides to risk life and limb to be the first to make it somewhere man has never touched. It’s wild and dangerous, and it makes for some of the best stories. It’s hardcore romantic. Or hardcore ridiculous. Depends how you look at it.

Of course, there’s tons of downsides to exploring. Privation, starvation, dehydration—lots of tions. Horrible lonely agony and death isn’t all that romantic IRL.

Luckily, there’s another way to venture out into the unknown, to a place where you find what you’re truly made of. It requires many of the explorers’ characteristics: pig-headedness, stupidity, self-confidence, a general feeling of being unsettled, and an illogical desire to prove something to yourself and anyone who might care.

You can write.

Seriously. Not having the guts to venture into jungles or brave never-ending sheets of ice, I sit down and fill blank pages with words. It’s a great way to find out what you're made of. What’s in you will come out if you give it a chance, and there’s no risk of having to drink your own urine or whatever. Really, writing is exploration for cowards. And it’s still terrifying sometimes. Think of those real explorers. Talk about stones.

You know who I really hate? Great explorers who were also great writers. That’s just not fair. Leave some for the rest of us. Cheers and see you after.