Here we go–for real this time, I think.
I’m sitting at my desk on the second floor of the back half of a nondescript building in a nondescript industrial park in a suburb of Santa Barbara, California. It’s the start of my second day of work here. Nothing was accomplished the first day, yesterday, except for a lot of inevitable wrestling with computers and software.
Just a few steps away is the desk that was mine when I worked here a decade ago–now in use by someone who actually collects a paycheck here. (My own mother, oddly enough.) On the one hand, I miss being near the window. On the other hand, the view out of the window is only of the junkyard next door.
Memories of a decade ago have been very present for the last few days. On Sunday, after the briefest of vacation stops in Orange County–most of it spent helping a friend move–I was driven by L. up to Ojai, retracing the route I followed when I first moved there in January of 1998. After an afternoon trip with my mom down to the beach in Ventura, I took a drive through downtown Ojai, looking at what’s changed and what hasn’t. I poked around the streets off the main drag until I found a restaurant I remember frequenting for Saturday morning breakfasts with the girl I got engaged to, then disengaged from. I drove up to the Ojai Valley lookout point on the road that winds and climbs out of the back of the valley.
So it’s the start of my second day of work, and precisely because I don’t draw a paycheck here, I get to start it by blogging. Now that I’m well connected to the Internet tubes once again, I expect to exercise that freedom often.