My T-shirt: I’m a writer

My quest started in 2005 with a trip to my T-shirt’s factory of origin in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

With the next chapter of the quest now less than 3 weeks away, it’s time I fill you in on what inspired the quest and what exactly went down in Honduras (A little hint: At one point in time I violate every factory workers’ Human Right to NOT see me stripping).

I’ll be using a mix of narrative, past blog posts, and current thoughts over the next few weeks to tell this first Chapter which I’ll call: My T-shirt.

In the PAGES section you will find a link to My T-shirt. I will be updating the page with each new contribution to the chapter. In the end, it will read as one continuous document from start to finish.

So without further ado, the first installment of the first chapter…

My T-shirt: I’m a writer

I’m in the thinking man position. Except I’m trying not to think and, instead of sitting on a granite stool, I’m sitting on a porcelain toilet.

In case you were wondering, my business is over.

Steam billows out from the shower and has coated the mirror revealing my most recent drawing – a smiley face.

I’m not smiling.

In 2001 I set out on my first trip. I went around the world. I remember being in Byron Bay Australia at a café across from the beach reading the newspaper and drinking a hot chocolate. (I hate coffee, but I liked to dabble in the coolness of the café scene so I liked to have a nice big steaming mug in my hand. The fact that the barista looked at me like a fool when I ordered a hot chocolate was something I chose to ignore.) An article in the paper said that people aren’t ready to settle down and become “adults” until the age of 26. This was good news. I was 23. I tore out the article and later called Annie, my girlfriend of five years, who was at college in Ohio. She got real quiet.

Now, I’m 26.

Annie and I live in a 600 square-foot apartment near Raleigh, North Carolina. She moved here to take a position as a nanny when all she really wanted to do was get a job and live within a one hour radius of her family back in Ohio. I didn’t ask her to do this, but she did it for me, for us. Annie knew that I wouldn’t move back to small town Ohio where there were few opportunities for a writer/SCUBA instructor.

I moved here from Key West where I had just finished working the spring/summer season as a SCUBA instructor. It was a dream job that I could only stand for six months and then I needed a breather from the diving tourists and all of there macho nervous energy, sea-sickness, and creative ways to try to harm themselves and others while on the boat and underwater.

Key West is also where my writing career began. The Key West City Paper was the first publication to carry my column, Travelin’ Light. Usually the column appeared on the same page as an ad for the SCRUB CLUB, a massage parlor with very expensive and all-inclusive “massages” given by women with large fake breasts.

Here’s a description of the column from some of my marketing materials (note: these marketing materials don’t work very well):

Through humility and humiliation, wisdom and naïveté, Travelin’ Light is a weekly column that introduces its readers to people, places, and adventures both domestic and exotic, touching and hilarious.

With humor and a conscience, Kelsey Timmerman inspires those readers with the travel bug to get out and see the world and brings the world to those readers who may not have the opportunity to go where Travelin’ Light takes them.

Travelin’ Light: The Land of Tourons

I contributed for the pleasure of contributing. At one point I convinced Miko the editor to pay me. Then the hurricanes came and there was no more Key West City Paper.

I told myself that I would no longer contribute anything for free. The next paper to carry Travelin’ Light paid me $5/column or about one-half of one-cent per word.

I was a writer.