One-Way Ticket

It was a real commitment to purchase a one-way ticket. Two weeks later, I left my car at the Saab mechanics' place in Santa Fe in exchange for a check, climbed into Thea's car, and rode to the Albuquerque airport with Thea and Rick. I was too excited and elated to feel sad when it was time to say good-bye (sorry, family!).

 'Bye New Mexico! (Sandia Peak from Concourse A at the Sunport)

Los Angeles, last view of the Mainland!

  At the Hilo airport. Coqui frogs chirp their greeting.

                                                                            

Trading this . . .

. . . for this.    (Photo by Brocken Inaglory, 2007--It was dark when I flew over.)

I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way!

I had promised myself to be away from Santa Fe by January and not to spend another winter shivering. Although I wanted a job, and especially a job in a library, I felt courageous enough to go somewhere without one.

 

Serious about making a change, I applied for more than 20 jobs, mostly library positions but a couple museums and some others, like the office manager at a SCUBA charter company. With all those applications, I guess it was inevitable that I would get some interviews. I have lost count, but I think there were eight interviews. Most were on the phone, a few were via Skype, and one was in person.

Library positions I applied for through governmentjobs.com.

Through this process, I discovered a method to deal with inflated self-esteem. If you ever have too much self confidence, I would advise the remedy of a phone interview. It's sure to bring you down a couple of notches. 

Most of the interviews were followed by rejection calls. But I only need one job, and the one I wanted most, at the University of Hawaii in Hilo, asked for another interview. It took a long time, but they did call back. I applied in July, had my first phone interview in September, a final interview--long phone call--with the library director on October 10, and was recommended for hire three days later. Good enough for me! If, for any reason, the job fell through, I figured I could get a job at a bank, at a restaurant, or hey, I know how to make beds at a resort. 

I took the plunge, sold my car, scheduled a moving company, reserved a hotel room, and purchased a one-way ticket to Hilo.

Ouroboros

The decisive transformation occurred at my 62nd birthday and not at one of those milestone years. That's when I adopted Ouroboros as my new identity: Ouroboros, the snake who consumes herself to recreate herself continually. For me, it was more like shedding skin after skin to find myself under all the skins  of accommodation, anger, and fear.

I became serious about questions I had been asking myself for years:  What do I really want? How badly do I want it? What am I willing to sacrifice?

Mainly I want to be warm. Every winter in Northern New Mexico was harder than the last. I didn't get enough exercise so I started feeling sick a lot of the time.  When I was cold, I became a potato because I didn't like to leave the house. I didn't go outside, I didn't get exercise, I felt depressed, and I gained weight. Mainly I had more headaches from the lack of exercise, and that was the intolerable part of the winter.

New Mexico is too dry for me. I love the water; I thrive near water. In NM my skin, lips, hair, eyes, hands, digestion, lungs were so dry all the time. The worst was my nose. I had sores in my nose from the dryness unless we had several days in a row of rain--obviously, a rare occurrence.

And all that complaining about the altitude.  I complained about being up at 7000 feet above sea level for 29 years, since 1986. 

Not enough oxygen, not enough water. What am I doing here? If I had the opportunity, did I have the courage to pursue this move?  Finally, at 62 years old, the answer was a resounding YES.

At that time, during the spring of 2015, I was still enjoying my job in Santa Fe.  The only two things wrong with it were that it was not in Hawaii and the clueless University administration. This administration periodically required us to do things against professional best practices--actually more in line with what might be called worst practices. But we were ignored most of the time and I was able to do my work in relative peace and obscurity.

Then that changed and the clueless administration was actively tossing library services out the window. In July, it became intolerable.

Fogelson Library, July 2015: A pool table, part of the gaming center in the new Student Union. On the main level of the academic library.

I saw a counselor to discuss things, and I began to understand just how much Ouroboros had done for me. With each session, I felt more relaxed and certain that what I wanted--but also what I needed--was to move on: to leave New Mexico, and to be warm, near water, at sea level. I started applying for jobs in places that stay warm in the winter. 

The new me: centered, courageous, decisive, adventurous, and living in a way that does not compromise my professional values.