travel

Oh, the places I’ve been

I am not above falling a little in love with the places I’ve visited.

I flew back to New York yesterday afternoon after about half a week in Austin, Texas. I was there visiting schools — UT Austin, St. Edward’s University, and a two-hour drive to San Antonio — for work, while also visiting with my sister, who’s presently living there because of her own job. Lest you think I got much vacationing in while I was there, I left straight from the office on Tuesday afternoon, immediately after a presentation about commissioning textbooks, and I was up most mornings before the sunrise while I was there. (Did I mention it was a two-hour drive both ways to UTSA?) Aside from a couple of really nice dinners, the company of my sister and her cat and her husband, I didn’t really see much of Texas. It was nice to get back just so I could get a little sleep.

The weird thing is, I’m kind of okay with that. Austin’s a great city, but I’ve been there before. Was a time, I would have wanted very much to stay. Was a time, I seriously considered moving to Texas.

That was over a decade ago, however, and my life turned out a bit differently. It’s been almost that long since I’ve had any contact at all with the friend who first tried to convince me to move down to Austin. And while that sometimes makes me a little sad, ten years is a long time. Enough to make those thoughts — “you’re right, I should move to Austin” or “gosh, San Antonio is the prettiest city I’ve ever seen, I should move there” — feel like they were somebody else’s.

Moving there would have probably been hitching a ride of somebody else’s dream anyway. I think I said as much to my friend Sharon at the time. So while I applied for a handful — maybe even a large handful? I don’t remember — of jobs in the city, and did seriously consider it whenever Pennsylvania seemed like the wrong choice, it doesn’t feel like a place I’d want to live anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, the weather was lovely — if a bit hot — while I was there, and there’s plenty to do in the town that’s worth doing. Especially if you can put up with Texas traffic. It’s a place I probably wouldn’t mind visiting again, especially if I really got a chance for a more touristy visit, But it’s no longer a place I’m in love with, Austin or San Antonio. I don’t know when those feelings, if they were even real, went away, but went away they did.

I likely wouldn’t be musing about this at all if I was truly in love with New York, if this and now felt like the great long-term plan. It’s closer, and moving back here without a job was a smarter move than trying the same thing with Texas. But I think I’m still waiting for that new place to come along, the one I can fall a little in love with, take a chance on, and that won’t feel like somebody else’s half-remembered dream a decade from now.

Monday

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I had to go into the office today, because tomorrow I’m heading to Texas for work.

I don’t know that I’m looking forward to it, exactly, and I’m likely to be very busy, traveling to and from campuses, talking with instructors and whatnot.

I’ll be there for the rest of the week, returning Saturday.

So it’s Sunday

I’m a little more adjusted to being back from Canada, I guess, although no less nostalgic for my time there and kind of wishing I could go back. I’d like to, at some point, and hopefully it won’t take another three years like it did last time, but for now I’m sort of getting the hang again of being in New York.

Of course, I’ll be traveling to Texas in a couple of weeks for work. I’ve booked my plane tickets and rental car and everything.

It’s taken me a little while to get back into the swing of things, writing-wise, to recapture whatever momentum I was hopefully learning to build (if some days not actively building) in Banff. Part of that was my writing group getting canceled last weekend, and part of that was just the weirdness of returning after two weeks. But I’m back on the horse, and if not writing a lot yet, at least writing, and moreover finishing things.

I finished a story this evening, a flash piece I think I still need to trim about a hundred words from before sending it out. Meanwhile, I’ve got a couple of other stories — one written before, then other at, Banff — out for consideration elsewhere. The waiting to hear isn’t fun, nor are the rejection letters, but those rare moments when a story actually clicks, then falls together? That’s worth it.

My writing group wasn’t canceled this week, and I actually like what I wrote there too, but I think I’ve decided to stop posting those works in progress here. Partly because they sometimes do become actual works in progress, something I might want to expand and adapt and, eventually, submit. I don’t know that a short selection from a rough first draft posted here precludes me from doing so, or that it could reasonably be considered a reprint — which most places won’t buy — but I think I’ve decided to stop taking that risk.

Hopefully that will just give me added incentive to finish stories and sell them if I want anybody but my writing group to see what I’m working on.

Oh. Canada.

I am having a marvelous time in Canada.

I didn’t plan on ignoring the blog altogether, at least not the same way I actively planned to take a break from my Tumblr and my work e-mail. (In the case of the latter, I changed my password just before I left the office last Thursday and refused to memorize it.) It’s just turned out that way.

Granted, most of the regular visitors to this blog follow me on Twitter, where I’ve continued to blather, or have themselves actually been here in Canada with me. So posts here, even if I’d had the time or inclination, would have mostly just been repeating myself.

Still, it’s good to write these things down.

I arrived in Calgary on Friday evening, after a pair of pretty uneventful flights. On the way, I read about half of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, which I’m really enjoying. I may get around to finishing it on my return trip. (Although I do leave at 6 in the morning, so…)

I spent a good block of Saturday afternoon walking around downtown Calgary with Jocelyn, who offered to be my tour guide for a couple of hours while I was in town. The last time I was in Calgary, in 2011, I saw basically none of it, so it was nice to have the company and see a few of the sights. (That those sights included things like a flame-throwing octopus — fresh from Burning Man, apparently, and in town for Beakerhead — was just an added bonus.)

I had dinner, then, with Heather, who it was great to see again — even if I did feel like I should be using the servant’s entrance to visit her palatial estate. (My own room was nothing to sneeze about, quite lovely, but still.) We grabbed breakfast the next morning as well, and then I was racing out the door to catch the bus to Banff.

Which is where I’ve been since Sunday.

And it has been ridiculously beautiful here. Seriously, the cold weather I was warned about so far hasn’t really materialized — though it does feel like early fall — and it really is impossible not to be impressed by the gorgeous scenery. There’s just so much of it! I went to a geology talk-and-walk yesterday, given by the Banff Centre’s Director of Customer Service Jim Olver, and I still don’t quite remember how many mountains are around us.

And, despite a crazy-making evening during which my Chromebook died on me and I ran around (with Heather’s help) trying to get it to work again, the writing has actually been going well.

I finished a short story yesterday, then threw caution under the bus completely and decided to submit it somewhere. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, they reject it? (Oh my god, they could totally reject it. What have I done?!) It’s a goofy little piece, but I had fun writing it, so we’ll see.

I’m not yet settled on what’s next, though I’ve got a few stories in the pipeline and almost another week and a half to work on them here.

Did I mention that I’m having a marvelous time?

Monday

I had to go into the office today, rather than work from home, but that’s only because I’ll be taking Friday off. I’ll actually be taking every Friday off in November, and a good number of them next month as well, as we wind down toward the end of the year.

Next year I think I need to better manage my vacation time…and actually take a vacation, not just a handful of days or a week when I do nothing much but sit at home and — this is what I did last month, anyway — become addicted to the TV show Scandal. I’m determined that next year will be the year I finally get my own apartment again — I moved back home just shy of ten years ago now — and that will eat into my disposable income. But I still think I need to go somewhere, and use up my vacation time in more creative ways than looking at the calendar and thinking, “Oh, I guess I could take those Fridays off…”

I mean, I like a good three-day weekend as much as the next guy, but there’s only so much you can do with them.

But anyway, going into the office today wasn’t so bad, its being a Monday notwithstanding. I’m moving to a nicer cubicle at the office, though IT has yet to switch my computer and phone over, so I’m kind of spread across the two workstations right now, my computer and phone (and me) in one, and all my books and files and whatnots in the other. Hopefully it’ll be sorted out before the end of the week.

One good thing about not working from home on Monday: I don’t have to carry my laptop home with me each weekend. (Or nearly miss my train every Friday because of ill-timed Windows updates.)

And finally, one of the textbooks I put into production this year, the first one I’ve worked on since joining the larger development group, has finally published, or at least arrived from the printer. That’s a great feeling, actually seeing this thing you worked on (and hopefully helped make better) and hold it in yours hands. I think it looks great, both with the content and how it looks, and I’m really hoping the author’s pleased and that the book sells really well. I’ve got two more books due before the end of the year, and another in late January, but this has been the first book I’ve developed that’s published in a while.

So, anyway, that’s pretty much Monday. I’ll just leave you with this. You can decide how accurate it actually is:

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