Maintenance
Recently, I passed an unusual sight. I was crossing over railroad tracks near my house—tracks I’ve crossed a hundred times—and I noticed a railroad worker on a tall ladder cleaning the warning lights.
Huh. In all my years and in all the train tracks I’ve driven over, I’ve never once seen this kind of maintenance. Yet, in our snowy, road-salt-ridden winter climate, one in which we often have to clean off our own cars’ headlights, it makes sense the signals would need to be cleaned, too.
It got me wondering about all the behind-the-scenes of, well, everything that I never see or even think about. Every job, profession, product or service out there doesn’t just appear, fully functional, before us. Usually we’re not curious—which is fine, since we can’t know the inner workings of everything—but I am curious about writing and publishing. There’s a lot I’ve learned over the years, but a lot I still need to learn. When writing became my daily thing, it was also easy to become “house blind” to it—you do the same thing over and over, like crossing those railroad tracks—without always seeing what needs to be done.
So that one worker on their tall ladder cleaning a warning light reminded me to not get complacent. There’s always “maintenance” I can do on my own writing. I’m now going to keep my eyes open to better see what needs to be done.