Buckle up, folks.  Scott says I’m entering… The Transition.  What an ominous sounding thing?! Apparently The Transition is well known in military circles.  I watched Scott go through his – without really knowing it had a word to define it.  We’ve talked a lot about how mine would be dramatically different.  Now it’s here.

I’m not sure if I’m going back to work or not at the end of this sabbatical.  I’m not even going to give it any credible thought until January/Feb/March and even that might be too early.  With that in mind, we are using The Secret (thank you, Oprah).  When we talk about the future, I am not going back to work.  I am indicating to the universe my long term intentions – putting my energy into what I want (I think… though the jury is still out) vice what I don’t want.

Breaking up with Charlie means no longer relying on him to define myself.  Heavy.

How did I get started on this today?  I took the kids to the park this morning.  I met a perfectly nice woman with her stepson.  She told me her story – she’s a temp worker.  Met her man at the mill.  When the work dried up they moved down here so that he could work at the Tampax factory.  She’s currently laid off.  They’re living in the RV park until it closes (in Sept/Oct?!).  She’s not sure what they’ll do come fall, it all depends on what work is available.  When she asked, I told her I’d lived all over the world and her response was, “Yeah, my man lived in Virginia once.  He’s just like you – lived all over.”  I guess that depends on perspective, but ok.

Towards the end on the conversation she said, “So… you’re in that old Winnie, huh?”  It was the way she said it.  Like…. “I got you, honey.  Everyone has hard times.”  It never dawned on me that The Chief might give people the impression that we’re having a hard go of it.  The Chief to me is kitsch, cool, nerdy.  It’s a throw back.  It’s paid for in-full.  We CHOOSE The Chief ON PURPOSE.  To her, we’re on the low end of the campground hierarchy.

Seeing who she thought I am was sort of fascinating.  It makes sense – if I tried to explain who we are she would have assumed I was smoking crack and quietly moved on.  This experience is like getting to step into an entirely world.  Oddly, it feels even more foreign than moving abroad.  At least there I was surrounded by like-minded people.  Here I’m totally out of my element.  Which brings me back to my question – what exactly is my element?  … The Transition begins.