Random Gorgeous

Or “I get lost on purpose”

I dropped the dog off at daycare—because that’s a thing we do. She gets anxious when we leave her on her own, and I’m too empathetic to let a dog suffer. I feel bad enough when I drop her off. I walk away from the daycare like I’m forgetting something important. I am. It’s Mini. Tears me up every time.

Today I have a huge block of free time. With Mini in daycare, I get to roam a bit. Very welcome, because lately I’ve been more or less stuck at home. Or, if not “stuck,” exactly, I have been in a situation where it was more inconvenient to try to leave than it was to simply stay.

I get a little hermit-like sometimes, I confess. Kara knows this about me, and tries to encourage me to get out and spend time among the three-dimensional people. To drink coffee I didn’t make at a table that isn’t in our house. To do my work, yes, of course. But to also maybe, if I could swing it, go have a good time doing something I enjoy.

Hobbies elude me.

That’s because all of my hobbies tend to become careers.

There was a time when I wrote fiction as a hobby. I did photography and videography and graphic design for the fun of it. I read to relax. All of those are jobs now. Part of my work. And don’t get me wrong, I love it all, still. I enjoy it and I’m passionate about it. But when you know that if you don’t write that day, it might mean you make less money tomorrow—when you know that you need to record that video to keep ad revenue up, you need to make that graphic to get the book ready for publishing, you need to snap a few photos to keep people interested in you on social media—the ‘fun’ is bonus, but it’s really all just work in the end.

I can’t complain.

I can complain, actually. But I shouldn’t. I mustn’t.

I try to live by the philosophy that if you are complaining about something, it means you think you have the power to change it, but you haven’t. Because complaining about something you have no power to change is kind of crazy. Like shaking your fist at the thunder, or giving a forest fire the finger.

So… I don’t complain. Usually. Sometimes.

If I have an actual hobby, I guess it would be “meandering.” Days like today, with the dog being looked after by someone else, with a tank full of gas and a laptop that lets me work anywhere, I tend to fall into a pattern. I drive. I wander. I take wrong turns.

I walk, too. I love strolling. It’s like driving, but it doesn’t cost me money no matter how far I go.

But driving gets me to new places faster, so it’s usually worth the gas.

And one of my favorite things, something I do all the time, is to get lost.

I do it on purpose. I just aim the front end of the Bronco down the road and I go. I drive until I see something interesting. I start taking all left turns (or all right turns, I’m not biased). I make big, lazy loops around a town or a city. I see things that sometimes even the locals never see. And sometimes I stop driving and check that stuff out—new shops, new restaurants, new parks. New to me, anyway.

I love novelty. My license plate even says KNOVELT. The K is silent, but you can sound it out if you want. I’m not your dad.

Is driving aimlessly a hobby? I’m never sure. I don’t think there are clubs for it, and my impression is that hobbies are things that could be club activities. Rooms of people playing board games or building plastic models or singing a cappella. Even writers have clubs. I’m not part of one, but I don’t judge.

Whether driving counts as a hobby or not, it’s something I really enjoy. Given today’s gas prices, it’s also one that can hit hard in the wallet region. But I don’t go too crazy, nor do I do it too often. Hermit-like tendencies help me regulate my behavior.

Today I’m out and about and enjoying the region north of Pittsburgh. I drove into Pittsburgh proper, earlier this morning, and enjoyed that experience, too.

The fascinating thing about driving is that not only do I discover a whole lot of new, I also end up discovering a lot of same. Cities, by and large, tend to share certain characteristics. Each has its own energy, and its own flavor—unique, like a fingerprint. But the form tends to be familiar. The rules tend to be what you’re used to.

The same is true for small towns. And rural areas. Depending, at least. Depending on the type of town. Seaside? Farm-adjacent? Steel-working or coal-mining? Mountains and high elevation? Tourist or suburban? There are a lot of flavors.

The similarities, though, are what tend to interest me. Even when Kara and I have traveled overseas—Paris or London or Bruges, anywhere—it’s always the similarities that stand out for me. Everything is different, after all. But I think I tend to look for threads that comfort me in the new blanket of this place. Commonalities that make me feel at home, if only for a minute or two.

Anyway, I have no hobbies. I can’t really take any on, at the moment. Too mobile. Too nomadic. And frankly, I can’t afford for one to turn into yet another career.

I have plenty as it is.

A SERIAL KILLER CREATES DIGITAL DEEPFAKES OF HIS VICTIMS, SO NO ONE REALIZES THEY’RE GONE.

That’s the premise of my new novel, ECHO. The fifth book in my Quake Runner: Alex Kayne thrillers. And it’s the problem Alex Kayne and her advanced AI, QuIEK, have to solve.

You might love this book. Find it, and the others, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books.

A NOTE AT THE END

I actually really love all the things I do. That’s the real reason I don’t complain. I’d love to make more money at all of it, to have even greater range and liberty, to reach more readers and hear from them when they love the books. But I think the thing that proves someone is doing the work of their heart and soul is whether they would do it for free.

I did it for free for years.

For the past couple of years, I’ve not done it for free, but I’ve done it for a lot less money than I was making before. I veered a little, trying something new, pouring my efforts into writing for contracts in the traditional publishing space. I’m not knocking it—I think those things are going to pay off. Eventually.

But the cost was losing some momentum in my indie publishing efforts. And now that I’m writing and releasing new indie titles, I’m starting to see a slow tilt, up and to the right, in book sales. I love seeing it. I’m embarrassingly grateful for it.

At the moment I’m sitting in a coffee shop, surrounded by strangers who have more or less the same general reasons for being here that I do. Coffee, obviously. But something else…

There are times when you need that “third place,” as Howard Schultz described it (when he reshaped Starbucks into what we know it as today). You need to glance over and see that guy with the laptop typing furiously. You need to pop your earbuds in and pretend you’re not hearing the couple across from you talk about their plans for the weekend. You just sometimes need that boisterous old timer to tell you about how this place used to be a gas station.

The random gorgeousness of humanity, recharging your cells and making you part of the flow of life.

I have my work as my excuse, to be here and be a part of things. To break me out of my hermit shell long enough to be reminded that these characters I proliferate onto the screen and the page are meant for someone. You. Them. Us.

So, thank you for giving me a reason to grab a coffee, listen to some overhead music, and be mildly creepy to strangers.

I mean well.