Well here it is, the first day of the rest of my working life. My resignation from USC is official today. I am completely, utterly done with them. It’s been a long, strange trip, my leaving.

When I graduated from college back in June of 1981 I had one goal: travel the world (or as much of it as I could afford on a $25/day budget). So I took all the money I could scrape together and headed off for Europe. For two months my best friend and I backpacked and Eurailed our way across Germany, to Austria, to Italy, to Greece, back to Italy, then on to France, then finally to England and Scotland. I arrived home dead broke but happy. I took the job at USC to fund my next trip. 24 years later (where did all the time go?!?), I find myself a little sad at leaving. It’s what I’ve done with my weekdays for so long I can’t really remember what it was like before. The reality of never going back hasn’t completely sunk in yet: that will take a month or two I expect (one of the cool things about working there was that I always had very long vacations). Now I have entered the brave new world of the self-employed. I was thrown into such a state of mental trauma as I approached the end that I was struck dumb, at least writing-wise, for the past month. I had nothing to say, literally – well, maybe it would be more accurate to say that I couldn’t put words to the flood of feelings and emotions that swept over me as I left the only fulltime job I had ever held. Suffice it to say, it was a weird time and I was in a very weird place.

I am happy to say that the worst is over, I have weathered the storm and arrived at calmer seas. We also have health insurance (the biggest stumbling block to our both taking the path to self-employment was health insurance and our ability to get it). For anybody thinking about doing what we’re doing, I have this to say: it’s a jungle out there, but there ARE options, even for folks who aren’t 22 years old in perfect health (though we’re in pretty darned good shape for the shape we’re in). The option we finally chose was a Blue Cross PPO small group plan. it’s not the Cadillac plan we had with USC, but it’s good insurance, and we can actually afford to get sick and get well with a doctor’s help, which I’d consider one of the goals of any decent health insurance package. Best of all, it’s a price we can afford. if you can, set up a small business (2 people but less than 51 qualifies, and the two can be co-owners) and go that route. It’s darned near impossible to get approved for individual plans.