Alas, all vacations must end
Today is my last at the San Jose Mercury News. When I arrived in this crazy place of perfect weather and tolerant populace, it seemed I was on vacation from the first day.
All I had to do to remain on vacation was spend 7.5 hours a day doing something that came as naturally to me as waking when rested. The pay was not great, but it was good. The company was often cranky but excellent. What the people of San Jose and points beyond needed to know, we told.
Five days a week of playing on computers and fixing people’s grammar was all it cost to subsidize a 10-year vacation from blizzard winters and tornado summers. The weekends were mine; the mornings were mine. California was mine, at least my little sliver of it. It was worth having, full of things worth doing.
I once read you should live in Southern California but leave before it makes you hard, and live in Northern California but leave before it makes you soft. Either way, you don’t stay.
So, it’s back to working for a living (assuming there’s work to be had). Sure, I’m sad that the gravy train ran out of track, but the great thing about this world is they’re always building a new one somewhere.
August 8th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Asta La Vista Dom Thomas…
August 9th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Godspeed, sir.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I’m a big fan of cross-country drives too. After leaving my newspaper job in Anchorage last summer, I drove down to the St. Louis area in six days. Also last summer drove with a son from Daytona Beach back to the St. Louis area, so managed to cross the country from corner to corner in the space of a couple months, then drove to Washington, D.C. a little later in the year. Then took the Highway 40 trip to Albuquerque this year. Good way to get to know the country