About me
My name is Thomas Albert Reading I. but I go by my artist's name Tommy Ready. The reason I'm mentioning the "I." because my mother (a lovely upper lower middle class elementary school teacher) wanted to call me after my great-grandfather (on my dad's side). The issue with this though was that he actually was called Thomas Alan Reading. So now I'm the first with this name. Take this mother! By the way, the last name is pronounced like the city in South England and not as in I'm reading a book. Thank you kindly.
Very early in my life my parents realized that I'm a traveler by heart: I was about 8 or 9 y/o and we spent the day at the dog school. There were no kids my age and I was not allowed to bring my game boy so I got bored (obviously). I bothered my parents a couple of times that I wanted to go home but they didn't take me home as you cannot leave an 8 y/o alone. Duh. Shortly afterwards I decided to just walk home. It wasn't that far. According to Google Maps - if I remember correctly - it's about an hour walk. Just along the national road. What could happen when a little boy walks there all alone? No biggie.
I came home and back then I didn't have a key so I couldn't go inside so I just asked the neighbor's boy to go play. Shortly after my parents came and, boy, were they angry.
This was just the first time I did something like this and it wouldn't end today. Eventually I was backpacking for 15 months in total (with a short break of three months). After that - you could say - I fled to Barcelona, where I have been living ever since.
A few years later I got a job as content creator which a big junk of the work is to research and write entries for the German blog. I've been learning a lot about this and got to use my skills in a professional way which excites me.
How I got into writing?
While I was backpacking I met a lovely, pretty lady who - for whatever reason - gave me a diary as a present. Just like that, she said. Nothing to it. I don't write diaries, I thought. A little later I was volunteering in a hostel in Spain and was working with one of the most amazing women I ever met. Destiny decided for us the meet and shortly after to split paths again when she quit and went to the Canaries. I was heart broken ... quelle surprise, I know.
Thus I started to write in the notebook how I felt about that as I didn't want to tell anyone that I had this massive crush on this woman.
What is the blog for?
For my backpacking I created a blog and called it "Viajunto" and thought I'd make it big. That didn't happen. The main reason was because I was too lazy to tell all my folks and friends back home the same story over and over again of what I was doing and stuff. So I thought ok, here is a blog with stories that I've been experiencing just read that. In the end I still told them. Some things are just not meant to be posted publicly on the internet.
After I returned home I realized there are not many stories happening to me that are interesting enough to write about and it kind of stopped.
Why short stories?
I don't remember how it first started. It was somewhere halfway through my journey in South America (which you can tell if you read the first story I wrote) but I really liked writing that. The creativity that comes with it was liberating somehow. It does sound stupid when I say it like this but it's totally true.
What's next?
I've been saying that I'm writing a novel for quite some time now and even though I do have some chapters down already it's not going as planned to say at least. I'm not giving up though. My goal for 2020 is to (at least) finish writing it. Publishing is a different pair of shoes.
For now I'm sticking to short stories as it's definitely easier and I feel like within a few pages you can portray everything that is needed without having to beat around the bush all the time; that just bores everyone.
...
So here I am today. Writing about things that pop up in my mind. I write about it in my blog or if it's more of an anecdote I write about it here. In addition to that I have a private collection and several journals that I write stuff in. Practice makes the master after all.
Very early in my life my parents realized that I'm a traveler by heart: I was about 8 or 9 y/o and we spent the day at the dog school. There were no kids my age and I was not allowed to bring my game boy so I got bored (obviously). I bothered my parents a couple of times that I wanted to go home but they didn't take me home as you cannot leave an 8 y/o alone. Duh. Shortly afterwards I decided to just walk home. It wasn't that far. According to Google Maps - if I remember correctly - it's about an hour walk. Just along the national road. What could happen when a little boy walks there all alone? No biggie.
I came home and back then I didn't have a key so I couldn't go inside so I just asked the neighbor's boy to go play. Shortly after my parents came and, boy, were they angry.
This was just the first time I did something like this and it wouldn't end today. Eventually I was backpacking for 15 months in total (with a short break of three months). After that - you could say - I fled to Barcelona, where I have been living ever since.
A few years later I got a job as content creator which a big junk of the work is to research and write entries for the German blog. I've been learning a lot about this and got to use my skills in a professional way which excites me.
How I got into writing?
While I was backpacking I met a lovely, pretty lady who - for whatever reason - gave me a diary as a present. Just like that, she said. Nothing to it. I don't write diaries, I thought. A little later I was volunteering in a hostel in Spain and was working with one of the most amazing women I ever met. Destiny decided for us the meet and shortly after to split paths again when she quit and went to the Canaries. I was heart broken ... quelle surprise, I know.
Thus I started to write in the notebook how I felt about that as I didn't want to tell anyone that I had this massive crush on this woman.
What is the blog for?
For my backpacking I created a blog and called it "Viajunto" and thought I'd make it big. That didn't happen. The main reason was because I was too lazy to tell all my folks and friends back home the same story over and over again of what I was doing and stuff. So I thought ok, here is a blog with stories that I've been experiencing just read that. In the end I still told them. Some things are just not meant to be posted publicly on the internet.
After I returned home I realized there are not many stories happening to me that are interesting enough to write about and it kind of stopped.
Why short stories?
I don't remember how it first started. It was somewhere halfway through my journey in South America (which you can tell if you read the first story I wrote) but I really liked writing that. The creativity that comes with it was liberating somehow. It does sound stupid when I say it like this but it's totally true.
What's next?
I've been saying that I'm writing a novel for quite some time now and even though I do have some chapters down already it's not going as planned to say at least. I'm not giving up though. My goal for 2020 is to (at least) finish writing it. Publishing is a different pair of shoes.
For now I'm sticking to short stories as it's definitely easier and I feel like within a few pages you can portray everything that is needed without having to beat around the bush all the time; that just bores everyone.
...
So here I am today. Writing about things that pop up in my mind. I write about it in my blog or if it's more of an anecdote I write about it here. In addition to that I have a private collection and several journals that I write stuff in. Practice makes the master after all.