Impending unemployment

I’m somewhat reticent about this topic, since I know that the natural reaction is jealousy. Y’all will just have to believe me that there were a lot of non-enviable situations leading up to it.

I’m taking a leave of absence from my job for the summer. The gist is that I leave, soon, and come back in a couple of months to a completely new job at the company*.

* Officially, of course, they may not have a job for me when I get back; that’s one of the risks I took.

I’ve been doing the same exact thing for five years and, sadly, that thing gets no respect or recognition within this company. I do, however, love my coworkers and the company, so I didn’t want to quit outright. Besides, I haven’t exactly found anyone to pay me a software engineer’s salary to ride my motorcycle and write about it.

The upshot is that I’ll be doing a lot of riding. Mostly day trips (did I mention this leave is unpaid? 😉 ), but I’m still doing the Hug the Curve tour and will make it out to Wisconsin to see my folks.

I most likely won’t be blogging the latter. I’m in a bad place, mentally, and am quite looking forward to taking an unplanned, unscheduled, open-ended trip where I don’t need to answer to anyone.

I know I want to go to Mt Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial, since my dad loved it and I was too young to appreciate our visit there. My WI trip is ostensibly to see him, and I’m looking forward to asking my mom what my dad loved so much about South Dakota (my dad has advanced Alzheimers and, though asking him directly would undoubtedly be amusing, it may not be very productive 😉 ).

I’ll be around for another couple of weeks, and, of course, I’ll be at the Sport-Touring.net West Coast Regional Meet. But don’t freak out if I’m a bit AWOL after that.

(though odds are good that I’ll make a Chicagoland ST.n coffee meet thanks to the glorious Stargzrgrl.)

…off to loot my own cube now. And order new brake pads. And new tires. Eek, expensive leave of absence.