Summer swimming at my local community pool in Pennsylvania was the best ever.
Before the pool opened. June 2012
The office where I bought my season pass. June 2012
Rope dividing the sections. August 2012
Diving area is beyond the rope. August 2012
Swimming In the lap lane, looking at the diving area. August 2012
You can barely see the seam at the bottom of the pool (diagonal line) that I use to swim in a straight line. August 2012
Goodbye to outdoor swimming for this year. August 2012
This leads me to changes. Currently I work at home, doing something a bit different from what I usually do for a living. I worked for over a year for a company based in California. Most people who work there work remotely – there are people I work with all over the US and a few other places. And I love telecommuting,
That changes in the middle of September. I am taking a job with a local organization. I have to go there every work day, though it is the easiest commute ever – two stoplights at the edge of my small town, get on the good freeway, the modern one, not the “good luck merging in traffic” one, two protected left turns right after the exit, and I’m there. It’s not a great time for me to get a job outside my home, but the job is a good one, I like the organization, and I will be doing work I value. The job was too good to pass up.
But – what this means is that after three years, my last California connection is gone. I can’t exactly pretend I’m just passing through, though I won’t retire here. I live here, in the house I grew up in, and I’ll go to work, every work day, to a job in this area.
I’m reminded of those movies where a person who has lived away returns home and discovers something. There’s usually a lesson, some connection, some reestablishment of roots, some closure, sometimes an appreciation of the “simpler” life. I don’t feel any of those things. My life is not a heartfelt movie.
And wait, my recruiter, who got me the job here, he lived in California for years, and liked it. There’s always a connection.
Amarez - feels like home 
This post makes me miss working with you. I look forward to hearing about the new job. And who knows about connections – when they are broken and when they are just forming. I think they are fluid. I tell D all the time, the next move doesn’t have to be our last.
-KM