Threshold Guardian

Yesterday afternoon I found out I had to be in Oakland this morning for an Unemployment Claim Appeal Hearing.

Ug.

I closed last night and got home around midnight so not much sleep (and I'm not even in Italy!). I hadn't been to this part of Oakland before so I gave up some valuable sleep time and got there over an hour early.

The hearing started about 15 minutes late and I doubt it lasted 30 minutes. I got to answer about 5 questions. Two of them about the spelling of my name.

It was pretty uneventful as everyone seemed to be telling the truth. Drama (and comedy) requires fibbing or at least misunderstanding.

BUT, after the hearing I sat down with our lawyer for the better part of an hour and asked lots of questions about what we should be doing to be sure we don't get the co. in trouble.

Fascinating! I learned a lot, totally worth all the aggravation.

Which brings up an interesting series of situations. Several times in the past couple weeks "special" projects have popped up and I've had to work on days off or at hours I would normally be deep asleep.

I hated them all. Beforehand. Yet, everyone of them turned out to be fun, interesting, and worthwhile.

But I sure did whine about them beforehand.

In the book, The Writer's Journey, he talks about story following the Hero's Journey. Right at the start you have Refusal of The Call, and Threshold Guardian. These are the monsters that stand at the gate that we don't want to go through in the first place.

Inertia, in other terms. (I'm reading a book about the science of failure; chemistry and physics.)

A true adventure is one we don't want to take.

P.S. Oakland Civic Center is lovely!