Last Friday, I completed twenty years of driving truck at my
current job. Just in case anyone is wondering, that’s a LONG time. How long?
Well, Clinton was President when I started working there. Google did not yet
exist. Neither did YouTube. Or Facebook. Or Twitter. And while cell phones
existed, most people did not have one. Same goes for the Internet.
A lot has changed at my job since I first started driving
there. The most notable change is that most of the people who worked at the
place are now gone. Out of the more than a hundred employees in 1998, only a
handful are left. And yet, the job is still pretty much the same; I drive, and
drive, and then drive some more. I’ve logged nearly three million miles since
that first day. And that’s just in the semi, which doesn’t count the 130 miles
I commute.
I’ve been asked how I can stand to drive so much and the
answer is simple; when I went to work there, I didn’t set out to drive three
million miles, or even one million. I just drove, one mile at a time—for a few
hours at a time. The hours turned to days, the days turned to weeks, then to
months and years. Easy, right?
Of course, I was a lot younger back then, twenty years
younger to be exact. Good thing the job isn’t hard, huh? No matter what some
people claim, driving a truck is really not something that takes a lot of effort.
The most difficult part of the job is staying awake, which does seem to be a
little tougher the older I get.
Speaking of staying awake, I’ve noticed it’s far easier to
do if I get more sleep. My typical four to five hours per night, which is what I’ve
slept most of my life, just doesn’t cut it anymore. So, I think I’ll wrap up
this post and maybe go to bed—since in a few hours it’ll be time to start year
number twenty-one at my job. Yay! ~
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