One Less Thing I Want to Be

At right: In Cambodia near Angkor Wat children earn money selling souvenirs. This is where we ate breakfast one morning.

Last summer I scratched "travel writer" off my list of things I'd like to be and my list of ways to make more money. Where it came from I don't know, but I imagined myself underneath the ceiling fan in the bar of the Raffles Hotel oblivious to the half-finished cocktail (now, that's imagination!) while engrossed in my travelogue, furiously trying to capture the allure of the tropics while threading a bon mot or two of my own into the missive, all the while my editor waited on pins and needles stateside for my copy to come across the wire.

I gave the fantasy the ol' college try. I sold some stories before a trip to Cambodia and Thailand. That coupled with the stories I would sell upon my return would not only pay for the trip, but would garner some extra income and reignite the passion in my marriage.

It didn't work out according to plan. I ended up not filing a damn word except a few emails to extricate myself from the assignments I worked so hard to get. It's not that the passion part got in the way, it's just that I found out I really did not want to be a travel writer.