Yellow Author Fever

1. LIFELONG SCIENTIST AND UNIVERSITY PROF DRIVES A CAB AND BLOGS.

2. FIFTEEN YEAR VET OF MONTREAL'S TAXI FORCE IS A SERIOUS AUTHOR TOO.

Where's your book, Gil? That's what some of my relatives and friends ask me. Well, I don't feel like I have enough book-worthy material typed out yet. Volumes of it are certainly written, sketched, and drawn out on my extensive collection of artsy journals, which I've maintained since my mid-teens.

Obviously, only the last three years contain taxicab accounts, while the rest are from hitch-hiking around North America, attending college, and short stints in a smorgasbord of jobs. The thing is that it's just as important to me to publish text and illustration on taxi life as it is to do so for the three other most important themes of my life: budget travel, sustainable living, and altruistic spirituality.

I'm trying to find a way to sew these all together into a quilt that might eventually produce that book, or at least a solid, unwavering sense of personal happiness to carry with me wherever I go. All I really want is to maximize the meaningfulness of as many lives as possible, starting of course with my own. I want to have lofty goals (like a book), but only if they truly serve a deeper purpose than just massaging my own ego. That is perhaps where my hesitation lies, if not feelings of inexperience and unreadiness. Or maybe it's those feelings that are the true ego.

My life has enough direction on its plate right now. I'm saving up madly in preparation for my lightly-packed and open-ended adventure to Europe and the Mediterranean, which is set to begin in late July and carry on for about two months. Upon returning to New York in mid to late September, I will make the official, long-awaited move out of 'the nest'. Ideally, I want to find a communal loft space somewhere nearby in Brooklyn that I can share with like minds, to keep my rent low, while residing in one of the little make-shift rooms. Even more ideal would be to find a set-up like that in Jackson Heights, my favorite neighborhood, due to its diversity. I don't know what comes after that, but it's bound to be exciting.