The Sun Is Back (Or I am.)

So there I was, sitting in Port Angeles, WA, on a bus pointed at Sea-Tac Airport south of Seattle.

Was this for me? Again?

I had been to Ecuador twice before, had gotten residency twice before, and both times I had decided not to stay. Because I hadn't realized that I was already dead.

I do now. I think.

Over the last 15 months since I left Ecuador the second time, after I had returned to the U.S., to Washington state, I have disappointed myself, and life has disappointed me.

I had plans, but many of them were not executable due to the circumstances of life as we know it these days, or if they were executable, were only partly executable.

And the rest of my plans, though I was able to carry them out, went missing because, well, ah — I just didn't feel like playing out the whole script.

Some things were administrative: buy a car, select a city to live in, find an apartment, settle in, get to know the place, become another anonymous resident.

Most of the items on my mental to-do list were more decidedly soulful — experiences worth pursuing for their own sake. In other words, making a lot of backpacking trips.

However.

The administrative details kept tripping me. I was aiming at living in Wenatchee. Wenatchee wasn't waiting to receive me into its loving grace. Too expensive.

Although I'm not poor, my income ain't what it was. Walla Walla was too small and isolated. Yakima offered too little, especially the barren landscapes outside the city limits. The Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick are in a constant vibrant hum. Lots to do there, well-supplied by retailers. No shortage of cultural events and clubs and so on, but again, more barren landscapes outside the city limits and nowhere to go for miles and miles.

Yeah, so then there was Port Angeles, population 19,000. Not great either, but Olympic National Park is on one side and the ocean is on the other (you can see Canada straight across, 20 miles or so, right there). And cheap.

And gray and wet all winter. But cheap. And close to wilderness.

So that's where I stayed, waiting. Waiting for winter to get over so I could do in the summer of 2015 what I'd wanted to do in the summer of 2014 but couldn't, due to driving around, checking out various cities, hunting for apartments and failing to find a decent and affordable one. What I wanted to do was major backpacking, now that my retirement income had doubled and I could kick back and give backpacking my full attention and just do it.

And then, after waiting months and months and months through the winter, spring came, and then summer, and a lot of Washington state caught fire.

Every place I really wanted to get to burst into flames, so I went to the second tier of places on my list, and those were on fire too, and the third tier, and I ended up going back to trails I'd hiked before, again and again, and ultimately found that I didn't care all that much any more.

I found that it was more fun sleeping in than springing out of bed for an early start to another long day on the trail. I found that I got bored while hiking. It was work.

Partly because I saw very little new territory and partly because I didn't care all that much any more. My strength came back. It takes a while, but it came back fine. I could trudge uphill all day underneath a backpack, but why? I didn't know. I didn't really care to know — I was just bored.

So what's the point then?

I finally decided that I'd passed my expiration date. I'm still good for a while yet, though my flavor might have faded a mite. I might not quite have that sharp, spicy tang any more, maybe not enough of a decline in quality to register during a casual encounter, but it's there — I know it.

I got slightly confused a few times while driving, which is a fine early hint to get out of owning a car. Check.

My new favorite hobby became napping, especially on waking early, when I put the headphones in, tuned to the morning news, and sank back into sleep for another hour or two. Check.

I had fun drinking a beer with lunch. Check.

I endlessly frittered with unimportant things, or passed days just reading. Check.

I focused on small things and decided that what I really wanted was to be irresponsible and float — not to accomplish anything in particular.

And I realized that winter was coming again, and too soon. Which meant that there would be another eight or nine months of gray skies and drizzle before I could reconsider and get out into the back country and try things yet one more time (to be sure, really sure).

Bzzzt!

Hear that? It's the warning buzzer. What it means is that it's already too late. I bailed. Got my documents together, packed, bought a bus ticket on the Dungeness Line to take me to the airport, and flew away. Twenty-three hours after getting to the airport I descended the stairs from the final plane and once again was on the ground in Cuenca, Ecuador.

Today the sun is shining, right up there among the happy clouds. The temperature is 63°F but the sun is hot. There is a slight breeze — only enough to keep the air from getting stale, no more. The sun will set at 6:17 p.m. tonight and rise tomorrow at 6:12 a.m., The sun will keep doing that sort of thing as long as and even longer than anyone cares to notice.

I have a place to stay and good food. The rest is going to take care of itself.

If the sun is happy, I'm happy too.

I think it might work this time. And if not, I don't really care any more.

Self Outsourcing

Going with the flow monster.

Sure, I was bitter.

Worked there 23 years. Loyal. Always showed up on time. Had great performance reviews.

Then the ax fell.

Downsizing. Rightsizing. Market adaptation. Streamlining. Meanlining. All different ways of saying the same thing.

I was out. That was it. That was all.

I spent a lot of time in my apartment. Went for a lot of walks. Looked for work. You know how it is.

No one was hiring. Not me anyway.

Then I got an idea. Here's how it works.

Say you lose your job to someone in the Philippines who's making one tenth of what you did. With me so far? Probably.

You can't compete, right? So you have to do something else. Now this "something else" could be a lot of things, but chances are good that no matter what, you'll never make more than one tenth of what you did before. If you are lucky.

So the other part is that there are lots of companies looking for cheap contract labor, and they don't care who you are, where you are, or really how good you are. You need only three things.

One is being cheap. The second is being available. The third is being foreign.

So I started a summer camp. I call it a "computer camp".

I hook up with parents who have kids they need to get rid of for a few weeks, and I offer to train them.

I collect $1000 a week per kid, give each a computer and a headset, and teach the kids how to do phone work, computer support, give astrological readings, buy and sell stocks, read x-rays. You name it.

The first half day is spent covering the basics, but these are bright kids so they catch on fast.

The hard part is getting the kids to carry out a full transaction using only one accent. It doesn't matter which one it is, as long as they can stick with it for five minutes. Some of them start giggling. Some forget who they are supposed to be and slid all over the globe, verbally.

But overall it works.

I give the kids 10% of what their parents pay me, plus $5 an hour. That's pretty good money for a 14-year-old. Some kids beg their parents to leave them at my camp all summer. Not many can make it work but they try.

I've found that almost any semi-intelligent teenager can handle almost anything. And let's get real here - how good is the service anywhere else?

Sure, you can say that a medical diagnosis is a pretty big deal, but on average we do about as well as any other outsourced medical services company. We've got Wikipedia, Google, and a few other online resources, plus a lot of info on DVDs, and some military training materials I was able to get at a discount from a couple of guys.

You'd be amazed and what they're willing to sell. You know, the Department of Veterans Affairs just doesn't help that much, so in a way these guys are just doing what I am, but with optional laser sights if you need them.

Anyway, I stay out of the freaky end. I live a nice, quiet life "offshore", and will actually be able to retire in a couple of years.

I've always wanted to travel, and I may just visit the country where my offices are supposed to be.

Or not.

No one cares anymore, least of all me.

Life. There are still sweet spots to be found.

Hi. I used to be Ernie.

By Ernesto.

Well, I guess I wasn't paying attention. I just showed up for work every day, did what I was supposed to, had lunch, and went home. It was like that for 18 years.

Then one day my boss came over and asked me who I was and what I was doing there.

"Hal," I said, "Quit the joking." But he didn't seem to recognize me. It was like he'd been replaced by a robot. A Hal-bot.

He didn't really say anything else, just reached over with a pair of scissors and cut off my tie. His eyes were all glassy and empty, and it seemed like I heard some clicking noises inside him. That was about it.

The security team came and escorted me out of the building. They were actually pretty nice about it. They gave me a roll of toilet paper as a thank-you gift for my years of service to the company and then shut the door. A couple of weeks later I heard that they had all been taken out back and executed, so overall I guess I got off pretty well.

So after that there wasn't much going on in my life.

I couldn't find another job because I didn't have any marketable skills. That's what you get from being employed for a long time. I guess it's true because I can't remember anything I did at work. I have a box full of pay stubs, but no memory of what I might have been doing there for two decades.

Then my wife left me and my dog died.

For a few months it was just me and the TV. I spent my evenings drinking beer, eating potato chips, and watching reruns of Mary Tyler Moore. I remember when the show first aired. Things were different then. For me it was the golden age of television. Mash, All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, and The Bob Newhart Show ran back to back on the same evening. Those were my glory days.

That, and having a job, and being married.

I missed my wife. And my dog. And an income.

After a few months of this I got pretty tired of it. I had enough money to live on but every day was the same.

I put an ad on Craigslist. I offered myself as a dog walker. At least it would be something to do.

I got a call from Joan.

Joan didn't have a dog but she knew me. She met me once. At work. She recognized my name on Craigslist. She was looking for a friend. Just companionship. We started seeing movies together. Sometimes we had coffee or went on walks. That was in the fall. Fall is a good time for walks. I like walking.

One day Joan asked how I felt about Surlandia. I'd never heard of it. I had no idea. Then Joan started talking. Surlandia is a country. Who knew?

She was thinking of moving there, and asked if I'd want to come too. I didn't really know what to say.

That was eight months ago. If I remember right. Remembering isn't my best quality. It can be a blessing, not remembering. You can see it that way. I kind of like not remembering too much.

What I do know is that now I'm in Surlandia, actually. With Joan. We're renting a small house and I'm learning Spanish. I never expected that. Things happen, you know?

Life is good. The days are warm but not hot and the people are nice.

They don't do things the way people do back home, wherever that is. But they seem to get by. I'm not sure how they manage but they manage. Maybe I'll learn from them. Knowing the language should help. I'm working on that.

Some others, I'm not so sure about.

Last week I was at the bank. It's different here. It takes about half a day. Which is strange if you're expecting something, but not so strange if you just go there and wait to see what happens.

There was a guy in the next line. He wasn't from here either. He looked a lot like the people I used to work with. After standing in line a half hour or so without moving, he just started yelling.

"Let's move this line right now," is what he said. What he yelled. Several times.

All right. We'll see.

No one much paid attention to him but I noticed a lot of people looking at their shoes. If shoes were lethal weapons then a lot of shoes got cocked, and had their safeties flicked to off. Or not. I'm not too sure how they really think around here.

I hope I don't do that, what the guy did. I've thought a couple of times. About doing something like that. But then I stop. I think again. Maybe look at the ceiling. Wait. See what happens. After a while, something does. Somehow it works.

So far, not that bad.

I'm learning. I feel like I might belong here some day.

I'll have to wait and see.