Let’s just say I work best under pressure.
As the 30th anniversary of my first trip to Thailand in 1987 started to come into focus earlier this year, I decided I should write a book about that fateful journey to commemorate the milestone and to get some of my stories down on paper before time and senility robbed me of them. If the truth be told, the same thought came and went at the 20th anniversary and again at the 25th anniversary.
I finally came to the astute realization that a book might be a bit of a stretch for me, especially given that I had not yet written a single page. So I decided a blog would suffice. Do it in bits and pieces; don’t over-analyze it; just get going!
The blog approach offered the added advantage of allowing me to write about the months leading up to what I hope will mark my “Return to Koh Tao” in December of 2017. A blog can change course, backtrack, repeat itself, and evolve in a way that a book generally can’t.
So on July 31, 2016, I took the plunge and created my WordPress account. Now it was legit—I was on the internet. I chose a template and because my own photos (Kodachrome slides) were buried deep in storage, I used a photo I found online several years ago as my backdrop (giving due credit to the photographer, of course)—a single image to serve as a placeholder for many of my own to come.
I set about creating the Home page, the About Me page, and the Contact page. That was easy and fun. The only thing left to do was to whip off my first blog post. And that is where everything came to a screeching halt. I had convinced myself that the first post had to be stellar. It had to set the stage and tone for all that was to follow. It felt more and more daunting. What could I possibly write that would hold a reader’s attention?
Days turned into weeks as I created artificial deadlines to buy myself more time. First it was the Queen of Thailand’s birthday on August 12, celebrated as Mother’s Day in Thailand. That would certainly be an auspicious occasion on which to launch my blog, I rationalized.
The day came and went.
Next up was my daughter’s birthday at the end of August. Surely that would be a fitting date on which to begin since I had met her father in Thailand.
Nope. Didn’t happen.
And then October rolled around and, sadly, the King of Thailand died on the 13th of the month.
King Bhumipol Adulyadej was highly revered by the Thai people and was the longest reigning monarch in the world. He also had the distinction of being the only monarch born in the United States. In fact, he was born in 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, less than a mile from the very restaurant where I ate my first Thai meal.
If the king’s passing wouldn’t be a catalyst for putting pen to paper (or keystrokes to computer), what would be?!
The answer, it seems, is externally imposed deadlines.
You see, at the architecture firm where I work we have a monthly presentation by staff members. The schedule rotates and I’m up next. My presentation is scheduled for Tuesday—just two days from now. (Tuesday also happens to be my birthday.) Since I decided several months ago that my presentation would be about Thailand and I already told everyone at work about my blog-to-be, it is clearly time to write or get off the pot.
So here I sit, on the eve on what would have been the king’s 89th birthday, writing this rambling excuse of a blog post—29 years almost to the day when I first set foot in Thailand.
And while I always like to say that I work best under pressure, maybe it would be more accurate to say that I work only under pressure!
Return to Koh Tao 