Two Things I love: Driving and Writing

I have tried to write something on driving many times. I always go off-roading and the piece of writing never gets done. I just can’t seem to keep the focus. I have so much to say about driving, I can probably write a book. I look at the car as most people look at their house.

On this attempt, I thought it might be easier to talk about writing and driving together. The topic of writing should keep me grounded because whenever I think about driving, I begin zoning-out. It has happened countless times.

Driving and writing are very much the same for me, in that they are both therapeutic. Both these actions allow me to enter a level of concentration where I am simply no longer part of anything else except what I am doing at that moment (driving or writing). I space-out to an extent where nothing else matters and I enjoy "waking-up", realizing that I had been doing something all along.

I just arrived home not long ago and as I was driving on the highway, I suddenly noticed how happy I was. There was nothing in particular that excited my happiness except that I had been concentrating on driving for the last little while. I was watching the setting of the sun, paying attention to the wind which was singing through my windows and my sunroof … everything was perfect. And I got lost in driving.

It is a liberating experience when You can focus on something You can enjoy and forget the world. The same thing happens for me when I write: I space-out to the point of losing most sense of what is going on around me. A mild form of meditation, I suppose.

Writing also goes hand-in-hand with driving. Not physical writing. I write in my mind when I drive. I can think about things which I want to write; I arrange and re-arrange thoughts … by the time I get home sometimes, I am ready to just sit down and write. This sort of happened with this piece today.

It was about time to write something about driving and when I realized how relaxing my drive was, I made a conscious decision to write about it when I got home while I was still on the road. I gathered some thoughts and prepared a rough copy in my mind. Then, I was suddenly home in front of the computer. I guess I drove myself home without thinking about it much by the end because I was thinking about writing.

Not many other actions make me as happy as driving and writing. While I was driving home today, looking at the sky I remember saying to myself:

“If I never had to stop to put gas, eat, sleep or go to the washroom, I would drive forever.”

And I would.