Taxi Driver

I googled ‘New York’ and ‘blog’ and ‘writing’ last night and what did I get?

For one, a neat blog called New York Hack by a woman who posts her daily life as a cab driver in New York. Her profile has been viewed (at this writing) 82,715 times. Um, whoa.

For some reason, I remember hearing that there were only three women cab drivers in New York. Or maybe that someone had only encountered three. Personally, I don’t remember how many female cabbies I’ve seen. Two? At least one. I know I’ve stopped in my tracks at least once and thought to myself, ‘Oh, neat.’

The amazing thing is that this female cabbie has written a book about her job and it’s coming out in late August. Its perfect title: ‘Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What To Do With My Life and Started Driving A Yellow Cab.’.

Hello??? How much more cool could it get?!?

Throwing down the gauntlet of the expected and becoming a cab driver, the rare female kind. The thought appeals to me, as I’m sure it appeals to many (hence the 82,715 profile views) – every day different, meeting people, the element of danger, an unstructured workplace. Encountering bite-sized adventures while driving in a place only slightly calmer than Super Marioland. At least she doesn’t have to constantly find parking spaces.

This brings to mind an article I’d read about someone who’d given up his law career to sell hotdogs in front of the building of his old law firm. I’d told my mom the story when I was in the midst of my ‘Wouldn’t-it-be-great-to-open-a-small-boutique’ phase.

Needless to say she didn’t think it’d be great, and she didn’t think much of the lawyer-turned-hotdog guy. I remember her raised eyebrows and incomprehensible mutterings about college tuition.

Oh well. One can always dream.


Photo by Bugged Out Cars. For more great images, click here.

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Old Hands, New Beginnings

Photo by 1115 on Flickr.
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I have a favorite anecdote I tell people when they’re despairing.

Long ago, I’d read an article in Art News about an accomplished woman painter. By chance, she sat in as a substitute teacher for a friend hers who taught a pottery class. After that one class, she was hooked. She changed media at the advanced age of 70. She became a sculptor and is now known for making large scale urns that are often placed in the landscape. Moral of the story: it’s never too late.

I’ve tried to find out more about her, but I’ve long since thrown away that magazine. Internet research has resulted in nothing. The world of large scale clay urns in the landscape is bigger than you’d think. But it doesn’t matter who she is. She can exist as an idea, and that is enough.

She’s the idea that your future is separate from your age and that we live in a world of unlimited possibilities. She’s the idea that our worlds can shift at any time, as long as we’re open and willing. She's the idea that it takes guts to really live. And she’s the idea that we can change, due to a chance event, our own wills, or a little bit of both.

The story of the woman potter is compelling because her discovery occurs at the age of 70, and for most, that's a long way away. This is proof of the ironic truth that it's the space of not knowing the future gives us hope. It’s when you think you know everything, when you think that life is already mapped out and inescapable, that things become really dismal.

Related posts: Ms. Annie Proulx.

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