One more piece of the puzzle fell into place this week. By that I mean I am one step closer to having a solid plan for 2012. My current employer sat with me and let me know that my replacement would be starting on March 5th, and that she couldn't afford to keep both of us on at the same time. That means my last day here will be March 2nd. Here is the back story in a nutshell:
I wanted to move out of my current job because it doesn't have much in the way of benefits, or potential for advancement... or pay come to think of it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great job for some people, and it has certainly taught me a lot. But I am not the desk jockey type, and I feel I have come as far as I can in this position. So I was applying for other jobs just to see what was out there. I had every intention of giving a month or more notice once I had found something promising. However, good intentions don't go a long way when the potential employer calls your current employer first. My current boss got extremely upset and it became clear that I would either need to give her notice before continuing to send out applications, or risk getting terminated or getting bad reviews from her when prospective employers called. I wasn't really ready to give notice, since nothing promising had come along, but I figured that if nothing came along by March I would do the PCT instead. I told my boss that I expected to be out by April (this was back in December), knowing that she would probably find a replacement well before then. Sure enough, she found my replacement, and my last day here will be March 2nd. That's fairly convenient in a way, because my deadline to get a job or commit to the PCT is March 1st.
Knowing my last day of employment is less than a month away was a sobering fact, so I went home after work and poured myself a martini (or three). By the way, I'm going to miss martinis on the trail.
For those of you who don't know my personal situation, I had a real estate phase that I recently went through, and am currently recovering from. I bought a house back in 2008 in Durham, CA (just outside of Chico). I was planning to live there and rennovate the property over the course of three or four years. Of course, life happens, and it turned out that I would need to transfer to Sacramento and take a higher paying job (i.e. the job I am in now). So I left the Durham house unfinished temporarily and bought a second house here in Sacramento. This second house was a burned out shell, so I figured I would have a contractor finish it in a few months, then I would move in. Meanwhile I would go to Durham on weekends and finish that house myself. It was a good plan on paper. Ok, it was a terrible plan on paper. Unfortunately the Sacramento house wasn't in the best neighborhood, and what wasn't stolen by vandals was ripped off by the shady contractor. The aforementioned shady contractor also, incidentally, failed to get any permits whatsoever. As it turns out, the city frowns on major construction projects that have no permits. So the last year and a half of my life has been spent paying fines, getting new permits, fixing the Sacramento house, dealing with break-ins, suing the shady contractor, etc. etc. Finally, as of November of 2011, the property was finished and sold. I had to owner finance, so there is still some work required, but for the most part I am finally free in terms of time and finances to continue work on Durham.
Now that my last day is March 2nd, I plan to move back up to Durham and work on the house full time. Butte County also has some amazing hikes, so I should be able to spend a lot of time getting in shape. Furthermore, the house has no internet, or TV, or working electricity in half of the building, or hot water... What I mean is there won't be a lot of distractions, so planning the hike should keep me busy as well.
