Friday, January 18, 2002

Well. I feel like I have a lot to write about, but I can think of very little that actually happened this past week.

There was only one major complication in my trip. Monday night, my Dad called the B&B I was staying in, to tell me that the admin assistant at Intersect called home, saying that Tuesday was the deadline for me to turn in my “I accept that I got fired and I won’t sue the company” paper. So, I had to drive home, find the paperwork, sign it, drive it Intersect, and and it in on Tuesday.

That wasn’t the complication. The complication arose as I was driving back to Front Royal, when I decided to hop out of the truck and take a couple of pictures (this one and this one). When I trotted back to my truck, I discovered that I’d locked the keys in the truck. The engine was still running, and even better, my coat was locked inside.

After a few moments of panic, I set out down the nearest driveway, and lucked out: the lady of the house was at home, she let me use her phone, and Mom was at home. She drove out to unlock the truck, and though I had to wait outside for quite awhile, in 45-degree weather with a light breeze, I survived. My Mom arrived, and in gratitude, I took her out to a late lunch in Middleburg.

Since arriving back home, I feel a renewed sense of purpose and dedication to the things I love. I want to write beautiful, inspiring prose. I want to make my garden more beautiful. I want to help people.

My trip was also a good opportunity to think about my current work-less situation. I’ve decided that, after figuring out my finances, and assuming that I have as much available money as I think I do, I’m going to take the next month to look for a really good job (technical writer or web-oriented, PHP/Perl/etc. programmer). In the meantime, I’ll write every day, for a significant amount of that day. If I don’t find a neat job by mid-February, I’ll look for any kind of programming job for which I’m qualified.

This should give me time to crank out a lot of writing — fiction and non-fiction — if I can keep myself committed to writing every day. It’s so easy to treat this time like it’s a vacation.