Always Scribble, Scribble, eh?

Many, many years ago, I was 3 days away from starting my first professional gig, out of college for a year and fleeing the Round Table Pizza nest. I was, in fact, leaving sedate and predictable Sacramento for energetic and dynamic San Francisco, where I would work for just over 4 years before (now regretfully) returning to that same city of sedation and predictability. It was the best job I ever quit, and I have to count it as among my major mistakes. As someone whose mistakes continue to accrue and are seldom minor, this says much.

I spent the first year in San Francisco trying to figure out what, exactly, a corporate technical writer was supposed to do. One of the first things I learned was that such a writer had to learn to endure with corporate reorganizations, one of which took me away from the woman who'd hired me and into a group of people who knew less about what to do with me than I did. The second year, though--things changed! I applied for a job with a different group, got hired, and ended up working with some excellent people and writers. My new boss turned into a wonderful mentor, the boss after him is still one of my best friends, and I learned more about writing in the following 3 years than I think I've learned since. It was an exciting time, and we were enthused about what we did. Perhaps I was just less cynical and jaded then, but I like to think that we were a group of people who thought we could write anything. I wish I had that same confidence today as I now work with writers who make me look anything but professional.

I left San Francisco for a job as a writer in a small consulting firm, and about the same time started graduate school. The job itself turned out to be terrible (or, at least, I was a terrible fit). But, one of my coworkers there turned out to be a very good friend, and he gets extra points for introducing me to the Yosemite Valley. I made other friends there, but I pretty much let them slip away. Getting laid-off from that job is one of the best things that could have happened to me for a number of reasons. Oh, it wasn't an easy time when I lost that job: My mother had been sick for awhile and would die just 5 months later, and my father would die only 3 months after that. Damn--what a year that was! The next job was at a distant Air Force base, and I stayed there longer than I should have. There was no stress at that job, but after awhile a 100-mile-per-day commute gets tiring and expensive. The next company was young and vibrant and growing, but it was soon purchased by an old, stodgy, static financial institution. And the next company after that was another fun place--lots of energy, wonderful co-workers, a dot.com enthusiasm that, unfortunately, was squelched when the company was bought by another boring, conservative corporation.

Now, for just over 2 years, I've been employed by a company that was once small but has also been bought by a larger entity. There's always a bigger fish, I guess, but I am happy now because I work with people who challenge me professionally and aren't afraid to tell me when I'm not doing something right. Actually, it's their job to tell me such things, and they are good at their jobs.

So, where does all of this come from? Partially, I suppose, it comes from thinking back to those feelings of excitement and fear that followed me on the train into San Francisco that first day so long ago. The title here was, from what I remember, spoken to Edward Gibbon after (or maybe before) he wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'm not thinking of Gibbon's work, however. Rather, the title itself is included in a collection of sayings and quotations gathered by the writers I worked with when I started my second year in the city. (I'll have to check with Kominski, but I believe we then sold that collection, entitled Almost Human, to raise money for one thing or another.

Finally, I am not much on New Year resolutions; I'm more the type to make adjustments as I move along. But, as I remember when I first ventured into San Francisco, I also now sense impending changes in many areas of life, though for the life of me I can't imagine what they'll be.