The First Step
October 9, 2020
They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
This is that step.
My name is Jason Matthew Brown. In college I picked up the nickname Jericho, and I rather like it. I was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1971. I escaped to Seattle, Washington in 1996 and I was forced by financial realities to return to STL in 2015. I work as a software tester.
I've been divorced, amicably, since 2008. I have no children. I have no siblings. My only parent and closest relative, my mother, died in July of this year. I have an aunt and a few cousins and a half sister, but no other real family.
I am polyamorous. Thus I have a few romantic ties here in St. Louis and a few in Seattle (that I haven't seen in five years) and a few, some I've never met, elsewhere in the country. In August of 2019 I tested positive for Herpes (HSV-1 and HSV-2) - this put a strain on my romantic life to say the least.
It's been a bad fourteen months.
In my heart and in my head, I have always been a nomad. For several years I felt that deeply. I went to college out of town but still in state, I traveled back and forth from St. Louis to Columbia, Missouri for years. I lived in Maine for three months with a girlfriend, I got there with a bus ticket provided by my best friend, Max. My Mom bought me the bus ticket to STL. I moved to Seattle because other friends bought me a bus ticket and sent me to live for a year with one of their friends - who became a friend of nearly 25 years and counting. Then, I settled down. I got married to that girlfriend from Maine. But, I was always happiest when I travelled. Traveling with my ex-wife to Maine and even St. Louis, and our honeymoon cruise were some of my favorite memories. I got to travel for work several times. I always loved those moments.
Over the years I tried to find more ways to travel. I tried to come up with ways to turn those great moments into a career. I read up on travel writing and I read travel logs. But, I could never find the right formula; the magic combination of time, money and talent needed to make those delightful moments into a passion and that passion into a career.
From 2009 to 2015, I spent as much time unemployed as employed. By the time of my last bout of unemployment, I had burned through my savings, two 401ks and all hope. I sold or gave away everything I owned, I kept only what could fit in my Pacifica. Max's folks and his wife sent him out to Seattle to drive me back to St. Louis. This probably saved my life, I was not in the best head space. But, even in my most depressed, defeated moment, driving across country with my best friend was a lot of fun and a great if tinted memory.
Jericho and Max mugging near the Snake River, June 2015.
My mother had been in poor health for several years. I did my best to help her where I could. In some ways, she depended on me. Losing her in July meant that I no longer had any heavy ties to St. Louis. If I left, say, moved back to Seattle, there would certainly be people I missed; family, friends, lovers - but, I had people in Seattle that I hadn't seen for half a decade, some closer than family. I missed them, too. I have people elsewhere I miss. Tying myself to one place wasn't going to solve that.
That was the moment it all came flooding back. The travel logs: Long Way Around and Road Fever, ideas for blogs and TV shows and YouTube channels and books, then I jumped down a YouTube rabbit hole that I am still spelunking: photography and vlogging and travel. It is possible to make a living as a Travel Writer.
... but, in the middle of a global pandemic? In the disaster zone we laughingly call “2020”?
Hmmmm...
I have to admit, I picked a terrible time to start this new career path. There's a deadly disease literally floating around. Tourism in most of the world is crashing. On top of that, I'm not much of a writer or a photographer or a videographer. I'm great at starting projects and really terrible at keeping up or finishing them. I'm 48, morbidly obese with type 2 diabetes and heart issues, bald and frankly fugly!
But, for the first time in years, I'm excited.
I'll start small. Super small. I need to learn how to use a still camera and a video camera if I ever want to get a good Instagram account and a good YouTube channel. I'll take day trips and weekends, at first by myself or with people in my Covid-19 Bubble. Then, long weekends. I'll submit some articles to various publications about traveling in a pandemic - all of which will be rejected. Hopefully, in a year, we'll have a vaccine, and by then I can try for longer trips. I'll write about the whole thing, The Process of becoming a travel writer and content creator, in this blog.
If I can stick with it and if the wind is to my back, maybe I can someday stop being a software tester and just travel.
Tim Leffel, well known travel blogger, once wrote of his career:
“I've traveled to dozens of countries on someone else's tab and I get to travel for a living, writing and posting photos about interesting places and people. It's been a very long time since I've dreaded a Monday ...”
How to be a Travel Writer - Don George
Is that not the perfect destination for this thousand mile journey?!