jesseslife.com

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. How many journals begin this way, I wonder.

My journey began back in April when I notified my boss I’d be leaving the company. I was tired of work, unsatisfied with my performance and generally suffering from wanderlust. For the last few years or so, I had stuck to the lower corner of my monitor a list of the Seven Summits. I daydreamed of standing on the top of Kilimanjaro in between sessions of debugging the latest problem with our product. You remember the old “York Peppermint Patty” TV commercials? You know the ones, where the office fills with snow and the guy jumps on the desk because he imagines himself a downhill skier? Let me just say that Peppermint Patty thoughts are not conducive to getting real work done.

At the time, I was also paying the mortgage on a small piece of San Diego real estate I bought in 1997. As a young guy, I understood the value of having a mortgage and not renting. What no one anticipated was the incredible growth that the city would experience in the subsequent 8 years. I was now sitting on a ticket that would allow me, in relative ease, to just …what? I now had an escape route, but I still had no idea where it lead.

But I quit anyway. “Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes,” and all that crap. Call the Realtor, list the house. I’ll figure out what to do next.