Ducks in a…

With less than 48 hours until I start the new job I’ve begun fran­ti­cally toss­ing things about seek­ing to get every­thing together. I’ve melted in my car for mul­ti­ple hours today run­ning errands and pick­ing things up, drop­ping things off, fax­ing things away, etc. I even took a prac­tice run.

Word has begun to spread, I had con­tact from peo­ple at the old job con­grat­u­lat­ing me on my new job. It’s funny, being unem­ployed is like an afflic­tion. When you’re unem­ployed peo­ple pity you mostly. “Oh man that sucks. Sorry.” I mean obvi­ously it’s not some­thing pos­i­tive, but peo­ple respond the same to unem­ploy­ment as they would to hear­ing that you’re about to undergo surgery. I think if more peo­ple knew at church I would have had lit­tle old ladies bring­ing din­ner by through­out the week.

I’m just psy­ched. I’m ready to get going. Over­all it’s just very exciting.

Last Sun­day I had gone so far as to file unem­ploy­ment before the burst of activ­ity and the find­ing of a new job. A woman called me about it this morn­ing and I told her that I had been plan­ning to call them to can­cel the fil­ing and she instructed me to write a let­ter out, include my name and social secu­rity num­ber, and fax it in to them as proof that I want it can­celed. Lit­tle did I recall that the UPS store charged an arm and a leg to fax any­thing. One page cost me $2.78!

I won­der if I’m the only per­son who unem­ploy­ment has cost money. Obvi­ously not, but it’s fun to wonder.

Tomor­row night as I pre­pare to go to work, I’ll be tak­ing the evening to per­form at SAK Com­edy Lab in the Lab Rats show. It’s the final show for a dear improv friend so I’m both eager for the show and dread­ing it as we bid her farewell onto the next leg of her journey.

K got me watch­ing Ewan McGre­gor’s doc­u­men­tary, “Long Way Round” about him and a fel­low actor named Charley Boor­man rid­ing motor­cy­cles from Lon­don to New York, cross­ing Asia and every­thing in between. It was fas­ci­nat­ing stuff and quite drama filled. Well that came out four years ago and they reunited the team to film “Long Way Down” where they go from the top of Scot­land down to Capetown, South Africa. It’s quite com­pelling and great moti­va­tion for find­ing a dream trip of my own and mak­ing it happen.

I think my dream trip is to tour the USA and see the sights as well as ride the rides. I’d rent an RV and tour the US’s best roller coast­ers. Rid­ing them, blog­ging the expe­ri­ence, prob­a­bly mak­ing videos along the way. It’d be great fun and well worth doing I should think, for the adren­a­line junkie that I am.

Tonight I’ve got to film episodes of my Magic the Gath­er­ing pod­cast before my video guy departs on a near month of trips and vaca­tion away from us, so we need to shoot for August and then I’ll be edit­ing the episodes while he’s gone.

It’s busy times, but that’s how I like it. Next time I’ll write about my new finan­cial plan given the new job and an intense desire to stop liv­ing pay­check to paycheck.