Loose Thread

It’s Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026, and I’m sitting on a bench in my backyard, watching the grass grow while struggling to come up with a good title for this blog. Heck, I’m struggling to think of what to write at all. It’s not for a lack of material. I have plenty. It’s figuring out the thread that connects everything. Chalk it up to writer’s block. Or jetlag. Or maybe even the cleaner I used on my driveway this morning. Whatever the cause, things just aren’t firing upstairs like I had expected.

I’ll just have to figure it out as I go. In the meantime, let’s start with one of the titles I’m considering: “Venturing Out.” It’s been almost a year to the day that I met my boss for lunch in a Dallas café and told him my plan to take a leave of absence and write full time. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, and even now, I’m often tempted to field calls, work a deal, see a paycheck.

After 43 years of living, I’ve learned that good things often come when I’m willing to take big risks. What happens in between the decision and the outcome is the part I’m living now. It’s not like I haven’t been here before. I guess that’s the saving grace of it all. That and a supportive wife who is willing to pull this thread with me and see where it leads.

I made my decision while camped at 12,000 feet in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. I was there to hike Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the Lower 48. The only problem was a snowstorm was forecasted to blow in the next day—summit day.

I remember standing there, staring up at a giant granite wall, wondering if the training, the travel, the sacrifice had all been for naught. But I also knew deep down that God had not brought me this far just to turn back out of fear. Too many things had fallen perfectly into place to get me to this point. Not only that, but the whole experience was oddly similar to another decision I had been grappling with in my professional life.

Which leads me to my next potential title: “A Little Cloud.” This past January, I began writing full time. Not a page here and there in between mortgage deals. But the kind of writing that has actually made the process enjoyable for the first time…ever. Immersive. Gripping. Exhausting. A blurred-reality-kind-of-writing. The real deal.

I wrote for eight months and only took a break in August when it was time to hike another pair of mountains. This time, it was the highest points of Utah and Idaho: Kings Peak and Mount Borah, respectively. I gave the pages I had completed to my wife and asked if she would read them while I was away. Then I left, making my way from Texas to Utah via New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming until I arrived at Henry’s Fork Trailhead in the High Unitas Wilderness.

King’s Peak stands at 13,528 feet. It’s about a 30-mile round-trip hike with more than 4,000 feet of vertical gain. Not easy. Not terrible either, except for the fact that I was hiking in the August heat and still recovering from a viral infection and a bout of strep throat. Not to mention the smoke from the wildfires out west had me coughing up mucous that could have passed for cardboard.

It got so bad that I could barely swallow. I needed to get back to my van, and fast. But I was carrying 35 lbs. of gear with eight miles left to go and a relentless mid-afternoon sun bearing down on me. I might be from Texas, but the dry, dusty, smoky conditions were taking their toll.

I remember stopping to rest under a lone tree, forcing down the last of my snacks and whatever electrolytes I had left, all the while praying for God to send a cloud. Even a little one. There’s a passage from the Bible in 1 Kings 18 where a servant of the prophet Elijah is sent to the summit of Mount Carmel to look for signs of rain. He climbs up six times but sees nothing. Then, on the seventh, he reports back to Elijah, “Behold, a little cloud like a man’s hand is rising from the sea.”

This is the scripture that came to mind as I looked into the clear blue sky. The minutes slowly passed. Five. Then 10. But no clouds formed. Not even a fingernail. Disappointed, I hoisted my pack onto my back and kept on going, exhausted but hoping to make it to the trailhead before dark.

I hadn’t gone 100 yards when I looked over my shoulder. What did I see? Well, it wasn’t a cloud… It was another hiker. I hadn’t seen or heard him approach, and his sudden presence startled me. He must have noticed my languid state because he asked, “Are you ok?” For a moment, I started at him in silence, totally confused, then nodded my head and said, “I think so.”

I believe his name was Adam, but I honestly can’t remember. All I know is, in that moment, his cheerful spirit and positive attitude had a far bigger impact than some fleeting cloud. We chatted about family, professions, even favorite authors. Having him around for the next three miles allowed me to focus on something else beside the sun, and before I knew it, I was standing underneath the shaded forest, reenergized by the kindness of a stranger.

My conversation with Adam was one of several impromptu discussions I had during my recent travels. There was the Aussie I met while hiking in Idaho who inadvertently gave me an idea for a name of a new character, the old friend from college who I hadn’t seen in more than a decade, and a “Fiddler in the Park” who I met while sitting on a random bench in Paris. The latter also being another potential title for this blog.

I’ll get to the fiddler shortly, but let’s begin with my good friend Alex. He and I have one of those friendships that no matter how long it’s been, whenever we see each other, it’s like no time had passed at all. Alex has also read multiple versions of my book through the years, most recently last November shortly after my meeting with my boss in that Dallas café.

Given the timing, his honest feedback made me wince. He told me the story was too big with too many characters. As a father of a kid who’s in my target audience, he advised me to focus less on the other characters and more on Maven, the raven character who inspired me to write the book from the start.

So instead of a story narrated in the third person from multiple viewpoints, I changed it to a first-person narration told from Maven’s viewpoint. That’s when things really began to click. When I met Alex for lunch outside of Boulder, I told him all about the changes I had made since we last spoke and was happy to hear that he had recently left his job, too, to pursue his own passion project. He also urged me to continue writing these blogs even though I often wonder if they’re worth the time and effort.

Now, to the fiddler…

My family recently returned from a trip to France. While there, my wife visited her company’s offices in Paris, and I spent the day exploring Le Marais, a neighborhood I hadn’t visited before. That’s how I stumbled upon Place des Vosges, a busy park lined with mature lime trees.

I took a seat on a bench and quietly observed the locals going about their day-to-day lives. Some were picnicking on the lawn, others sunbathing, and one, a young man sitting behind me on an adjoining bench, pulled out a fiddle and began to play. As I nodded along, I noticed a group of high-school-aged students interviewing random people for some kind of assignment.

They eventually made their way over to the fiddler. Turns out he was from the States but had been living in and traveling around France for the past few years. When asked about the best and worst part of being a musician, he said the best was creating music people could enjoy. The worst, he explained, was not knowing how he would pay his bills from month to month.

After the students left, I tapped the fiddler on the shoulder, gave him my last $40 euros, and asked him if he would keep playing. Thankful, he broke into another original he said he’d been working on. Afterward, we chatted a little. He told me it was good to talk with another Yankee. I took no offense.

He mentioned he was trying to decide where to go or what to do next with his life. You know, that next-chapter-of-life discussion we all have with ourselves at one point or another. I could hear the tension in his voice as he said it, and since this was a topic I felt more than qualified to speak to, I asked him if I could offer a word of advice.

Then I proceeded to tell him the same thing I would have told myself when I was 24 years old: to continue doing what he loved and not to worry about the money. That the money would come. All he needed to do was trust God. So long as he did, then God would open the right doors and close the wrong ones, all the while putting people in his path at just the right time, including a passerby from Texas who just happened to need another break from the blaring midafternoon sun. The silence that ensued was my cue to shake his hand, say goodbye, and continue on my way.

Which brings me back to present, to the bench I’m sitting on now, to my lawn. It’s taken years to get it looking as nice as it does. Laying the sod was the easy part. It was the prep work that was the challenge: clearing weeds, tilling and leveling, adding new soil, researching the right species of grass to plant. There’s something rewarding about seeing a plan come together even if that plan takes much longer than expected. The laughs and memories that fill the backyard on any given day outweigh the many hours I spent toiling under a hot Texas sun.

That gets me to thinking...

I might have finally figured out the missing thread that has eluded me from the start. It’s so obvious I’m not sure how I missed it: always wear a quality hat when you’re out in the sun. Did I mention I recently launched a new line of kids hats? That’s right! The two-tone, 5-panel hats come in black and pink colors and are the perfect fit for kids ages 2-8. Fashionable, lightweight, and 100% cotton—a classic thread if there ever was one.

Follow me on Instagram at @Joshua_Maven  or Facebook at Facebook/TheLastImperial.