Off the road inspiration

Like most, I’ve afforded my Vagabonding freedom through a variety of jobs. However, none have been as stupidly lucrative as waiting tables. For years I slaved away as a server between my stints on the road. Knowing the transitory nature of my downtime, I would forgo the search of more permanent employment. My love for the road far outweighed the notion of a settled career pursuit, so I found myself going back to waiting tables time and again.

Waiting tables is not only incredibly lucrative, it’s also quite flexible employment. I’ve left jobs for weeks, months, or year-long travels and have been welcomed sweetly and easily back into my previous place of employment.

Before I moved overseas, in order to save as big a travel fund as possible, I picked up so many extra shifts I considered wheeling a cot into the back office. I would pick up expediting shifts and simply not clock my hours. Working the dining room, I would clock in as late as possible and clock out well before I was through for the night, all to save on hours so that I could, you guessed it, work more. (Sing, Muse, of the tricks and trials of the Service Industry)

Of course I always had a goal in mind, but after months of living on caffeine and feeling 3 times my age, the light at the end of the tunnel hardly looked as seductive as sleeping for 48 hours straight. With a garish zombie grin on my face I pushed forward, hoping my guests would see past my drug-addict exterior to the reasoning behind it all. Once, during a hopeless 14-hour shift I grabbed a pen and, in a fit of desperate inspiration, wrote the word “Santorini” on the fleshy mound below my thumb. “Not such a good idea,” my coworkers opined. “It looks like you have the word “satan” written on your hand.” There had to be a better way, I thought.

There is: Pocket Shrine.

A Pocket Shrine is merely a tiny memento of personalized inspiration. It can be religious in tone, but needn’t be.  A Pocket Shrine is about finding what inspires you and keeping a few relics of this with you at all times to spur you on when your inspiration might be lagging.

I stuffed my server book full of photos from the road, quotes that inspired me, pictures of my friends in Europe, and tiny one-liners or full verses that could only make sense in the sea of my mind.

As a photographer, visuals make a profound impact upon me, and sometimes these few images and verses were all I needed to boost my spirits. It was, oddly, a very simple way of keeping the inspiration while biding my time off the road.

What will you put in your Pocket Shrine?