I had originally been talking about Northern California but the cost was too high. Instead, I think I’m going to indulge an impulse I have every time I do one of my I-285 loops. Just about every time I go through the tunnel — particularly if I’m eastbound at that point — I see the sign for I-75 toward Tampa and have the impulse to exit and go.

It’s about nine hours which is why I squelch it. That isn’t a weekend trip.

But since I’m planning on taking a couple days off right at Christmas, I think I’m going to indulge that impulse for my beach trip this year.

Any must-haves or must-misses?

What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done? Would you do it again?

On April 26, 2006, I told my supervisor that he needed to start looking for my replacement. I wasn’t giving formal notice at that point, but I had made the decision: for my own sanity I was moving away from Raleigh. By “away,” I meant far enough that I wouldn’t be able to commute in.

I didn’t have another job waiting for me. In fact, at that point I didn’t even know where I was going to end up. That following weekend, I picked three places: Charlotte, Atlanta and Washington (in that order). I also picked the date of the move: the weekend of the Independence Day holiday.

At that point, I kicked the job searching into high gear, but by mid-May I still hadn’t found anything. I went so far as to ask a friend of mine how much rent she would charge if I moved into her basement for a little while. I had enough saved up, and knew I could land a minimum-wage type job quickly enough, to manage that for four or five months.

I was lucky. I landed a job in Atlanta just in time, with a company that was willing to wait for me. I turned in my formal notice the Friday before Memorial Day. But I was still pretty scared because I was actually taking a very slight decrease to move to a place with a higher cost of living.

Six months later I bitterly regretted it when I lost that job. But I’m a fighter and I had twin motivations: a lease and an unwillingness to move back. I’d also already paid for a mini-vacation that weekend so I went ahead and took that to settle my mental state…and then I came back and started calling temporary agencies.

One of them placed me about a week later, and that placement turned into the job I have now.

I don’t know if I’d do something like that again, but I do know that I’ll be gone from Atlanta by June 2016, and probably back to Raleigh. (If I have my way it will be earlier.) The issues that drove me away don’t exist anymore, and I’m homesick.

That being said, it was still the right decision and I don’t regret it anymore.

Project URL: http://sonria.org/project/101-in-1001

Wednesday was “D-Day” in terms of the things at work that have been sapping my time and energy. There’s still plenty left to do — I’m planning on working on Monday — but the worst is now over for a while. To be honest, I’m rather looking forward to Monday since it’ll mean I’m able to get things done and (hopefully) come back to non-chaos on Tuesday.

Despite all that, I did better this week than I did last week. So let’s see if I can keep up the good work this next week.

For the record, D-Day wasn’t exactly fun but things could have been (and have been) a lot worse.

20. Attend Mass every week, without a miss, for 39 consecutive weeks.

I went to 5:00 Mass at All Saints last Saturday. I tend to prefer the Saturday vigil both because it’s in the evening (anyone who knows me can tell you that I am very emphatically not a morning person) and because it tends to have a more laid-back feel.

That being said, I never thought I could find hymns a little too contemporary. But that’s something I can live with; the Mass was entirely correct and appropriate. It even had a “social justice” type theme to it, and I find that very attractive.

31. Ask a guy out on a date.

It didn’t work, but I still get to cross this one off this week. No, I’m not going to share any details — sorry.

89. Answer the 50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind.

I posted the answer to question #5 on Wednesday, right on schedule.

90. Complete NaNoWriMo.

I realized something this week: With my current class schedule, I’ll be out of school for nearly the entire month of October. That means I’ll have some extra time to work out a plot and outline. I tend to do much better when I have one of those.

I also thought about a few ideas this week.

97. Make one substantive blog post per week for 26 consecutive weeks.

I only made one this week, so I was right at minimum again. But it counts, and puts me at six weeks.

101. Post progress each Saturday.

…and here’s the post.

Days Left: 889 (88.81%)

Next Update:

What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?

I don’t usually spend much time thinking about this sort of thing because it’s a sure path to depression. The world doesn’t change just because I want it to. The thing that I can change, and thus should spend my resources working to change, is myself.

In addition, while there’s an old saying that “the world doesn’t revolve around you,” the truth is that my world does. The corollary is that everyone’s particular world revolves around them. Each person’s perceptions, experiences and opinions concerning the world are directly — and solely — informed by their own interactions with it.

So my world is about me, and by working to change myself, I will change the world to what I want it to be. Whether or not I worked toward the way the world should be according to others, is something that will be judged when I die, and something I plan to worry about then.

I decided a long time ago that if that’s a selfish attitude, then I am selfish. But somehow, knowing how much I tend to care about things, I don’t think it is.

“I’m sorry,” I answered, “but I’ve been out of field for three-and-a-half-years. I’m probably not the candidate you’re looking for.”

Oh, that’s a shame. Well, thank you for your time.

The next thing I said surprised even me. “Wait a minute. I’d have to read up on the details, but I’m generally aware of the changes in COBRA. What’s the salary range for that one?”

It didn’t meet my requirements, so I turned down further consideration anyway. The incident still surprises me and makes me think, though.

First, it indicates that I may just be wrong with my assumption that my career in employee benefits administration went down in flames.

Second, it suggests that I’m actually still interested in getting back into the field, even though I’ve tried to convince myself it would be a bad idea. After all, part of the reason my career ended was because I burned out and that sent my performance into the toilet.

I’ve since learned a little about myself, though. One important thing I’ve learned is that I’m so intense that I’m going to burn out on anything sooner or later. I’m currently suffering from some burnout in my current position, which is totally unrelated to the kind of work I used to do.

It took me three years to burn out on marketing-type work. It took me over three times that long to burn out on benefits administration. When combined with the fact that I’ve been following the health care reform issue — I’ve admitted that I was a single-issue voter about it in the 2008 Presidential election — and the fact that I added CEBS coursework to my Day Zero list, I’m beginning to wonder if what I needed was a respite instead of a change.

Those who knew me when I worked in the field know that I’d considered it a vocation, not just a job or a career. I’d also often had cause to wonder if I had been meant to do it all my life. And despite the burnout, I’d loved the work. I’d been known to say I’d be willing to do it without pay if it weren’t for economic realities.

I’ve mourned the loss of that career more than once.

The idea that that mourning may have been premature is a fairly appealing one, and while I’d planned on other priorities, I’m thinking that I might just move the CEBS coursework up a little in priorities for my Day Zero list. Who knows? Maybe that particular career isn’t quite done yet.

There’s only one way to find out.

Project URL: http://sonria.org/project/101-in-1001

I was somewhat under the weather early this week and, as sometimes happens, it’s left me in a fairly depressed state. This weekend’s project is to get that fixed, and I’m going to use the list to get myself started. So hopefully next week’s update won’t look like this.

97. Make one substantive blog post per week for 26 consecutive weeks.

I made all of one, but one counts! Now at five weeks.

101. Post progress each Saturday.

Such as it is…

Days Left: 896 (89.51%)

Next Update: http://sonria.org/blog/2010/day-112-september-4-2010

I’m an unusually concrete thinker so an abstract theme isn’t easy for me. By the Sunday afternoon prior to the Tuesday class, I was getting a little desperate for ideas. Knowing that graffiti is sometimes psychedelic, I drove down to Atlanta’s Little Five Points and then caught DeKalb Avenue toward the Krog Street Bridge.

I didn’t see this mural on the side of Studio 900 until it was too late to drive past it. After taking a couple pictures on the other side of the Krog Street Bridge, I went back up DeKalb avenue and took pictures of the mural.

In the end, I chose to use a five-shot series of the face in the middle for my project. It was successful: the class agreed I’d done a good interpretation (and they were surprised when I proudly told them that the pictures are not in black-and-white).

This mural was put up in connection with the Living Walls project which had a conference in Atlanta beginning August 13; it was during this conference that an artist known as Gaia put the mural up. I took the pictures August 15. By August 18 — the day after my class — the mural had been tagged.

Apparently the wall was “claimed” in the graffiti community but, due to a buffing, the artists associated with Living Walls didn’t realize it when they put up the mural. In the spirit of the street art community, though, they have chosen to let the tags remain. I understand and agree with the decision, but I do wish that Vomet (the wall’s “owner”) had at least had the decency to cover up Gaia’s art with something just as beautiful.

The bottom line, though, was that the mural was up for probably no more than three or four days. So the mural itself was far more ephemeral than I’d realized. It really was a dream that came true for only a few days…and I was just lucky enough to capture it during that time.