Ch-ch-ch-changes – 324

I am now back at my own computer and desk. Actually, I’ve been back for just over a week now, but there was unpacking and laundry and phone calls and all the things that happen when you have been gone for a month.

I am now unemployed. My company denied me permission to go abroad for a month, as was their right. What bugged me was that after weeks of hearing “We’re still looking into it,” and “We’re waiting to hear back,” by the time I got a firm “no”, it was three days before I was leaving. Perhaps I should have assumed that it was going to go that way, and started looking for a job a few weeks before leaving. As it was, there was no point in starting to submit applications when I found out. It can take a company three days to call you, and I would not have been around to answer the phone.

A full break would have been one thing, but what they actually said, after thanking me for being so professional about leaving (trying to get as much work ahead done as possible, and documenting how to do the things I do), they said to keep in touch and reapply when I got back. So, that was one of the phone calls, and after beating around the bush a little they told me the position was filled. On one level it was a relief, because it was getting harder and harder to overlook certain corporate shortcomings, and I lost all respect for my manager, but I hate job hunting—and I haven’t really had to do any hard-core job searches for over ten years.

I hate that aspect of my current life, but I can’t regret the trip. There were so many wonderful experiences and memories, and so many wonderful people, and I feel really recharged. I didn’t even know that I needed recharging until I began to feel the difference.

I was able to do a fair amount of posts from the road, but never with photos and a lot of things were missed. I want to go back over those in greater detail, but I also have non-travel things I want to write about, so I have spun off a second blog. Sporktastic Travel can be viewed at http://sporktogo.blogspot.com/. I will start off going over all of the spots in Australia and New Zealand, and each post will have pictures. When I finish that, I will start reviewing Italy, which I have never written about despite going there twice. After that, well, I have never written about Hawaii, or Toronto or Disneyland. By then, we may be ready to go somewhere new. We’re looking at Scotland now, largely due to how charming and wonderful their men are. More details may come out about that.

This week’s sporkful (http://sporkful.blogspot.com/) will remain for everything else. Tomorrow it will start off with the election, and it will not be starting off with the presidential election. I have a local race I am very concerned about. Yes, it would have been good to post before people started getting their ballots.

I have half a mind to create a third blog to post the preparedness newsletters, but that might be overkill—or just time to bag it all and get my own URL. I have almost done that, actually. I have joined Facebook.

Initially I had a horror of social networking sites, because there just seemed to be so much stupidity associated with MySpace, and I did not want any part in that. It wasn’t just teens putting up skanky pictures, and meeting with predators, and harassing other kids, it was also the ranking of friends. Maria had a friend who had to be Number 1, and would punish infractions by lowering Maria’s ranking. She is approaching forty—leave junior high behind. Now!

Anyway, Maria left MySpace (and the “friendship”), and joined Facebook, and she kept finding all these people she hadn’t seen for ages, which I like, and you don’t rank your friends, and it is free. I had actually subscribed to Classmates, and it got me in touch with three people whose e-mail addresses I kept losing, so that was good, but why am I paying for it when there is a free one? Anyway, I joined two days ago.

One thing I have been wanting to do on the blog is have an area where I post the last movie watched and last book read, and I could never figure out how to do that. I am now adding those as notes to Facebook. I will periodically list what I am currently reading, what the last book was, and a short review of it.

I think the desire to do this comes from me missing my book club. We scattered to the four winds, and at some point after that I developed the urge to tell people about the books I read. Until I have a new job and schedule, I can’t really form a new one, so this will have to do for now. Maybe someone will read it and write to me, “Hey, that sounds interesting. Can I borrow it from you? And then maybe after I’ve finished we can discuss it?” It could happen.

If you are wondering, obviously the fact that I am job hunting means that I have not made it big as a screenwriter yet. However, I really only have one screenplay done, and it is not exactly in wide circulation. I still have hopes, but the industry average is that you will have written nine before you sell one. I have one that is about half done, and there is one that I sort of did as a script, but I wrote as a short story first. My goal is to concentrate on those two for now, since I have time. Anyway, it will be fun working on a vampire story this time of year.