A few years back, I wrote a poem entitled "Journeywomen." It was about drifting on the sea, and imagining the boats at the bottom of that sea, the "ancient journeywomen" who had labored for seafarers of the past. Since writing that poem, the sound and sense of "journeywomen" has stuck with me.
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I think of journeymen pitchers in baseball, the hurlers who are not superstars, but are reliable, reasonably-skilled and hard-working... and who often move from one team to the next with some frequency. Itinerant skilled workers.
I find something fitting in the sense of the journeyman as not yet a master, and yet as someone who is flexible, adaptable, at times even more useful than the master. The phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" refers to the journeyman as a "jack." And in the background, the journeyman is often struggling to become a master -- but just not yet there.
I call up my love of journeys, and how much joy I take from driving nowhere.
I consider the journey of my life -- how each decision, large or small, has changed my path and brought me to the current road I travel.
I wish for the excitement of the journey, and to feel that life is always that adventure, even when it seems commonplace.
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So when I sat down to create this blog, I thought about myself as a writer -- skilled, but no master -- and as a person -- still travelling through this life and wanting to mark the mileposts of my journey. And the title of my poem gave me the title of this blog.
(Someday I'll put the poem up on the blog. For now, I'm working on getting it published.)
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