Tomorrow I'm going to get on a train and go to Roanoke for an overnight trip. I purchased a rail pass in January but I've been too busy and too preoccupied to use. I also don't really have the resources.
Before I go I am thinking a little about Roanoke, a place I could imagine having stayed. I haven't spent much time since then, and this will be just a check-in.
I'll be working the whole time mostly, though I would like to go for a long walk. These days there's always work to do, even on a day off. I've taken on a lot of responsibility it seems and so I keep on as I can throughout each day, week, month, year.
Much of this exists on cvillepedia, a website I helped create and now owned and operated by the Jefferson Madison Regional Library. I do not own any of it, but the materials on it are very useful to me and I would like to find a way to get people to be interested in updating it.
I also want to find some way to pay people to do work for me, but I never quite make it there. It seems to me a lot of the time that the kind of work I do is seen as painful to most people. I don't see it, except when I do.
Right now I'm alternating between trying to get ready for the Week Ahead for tomorrow and going through old emails sent to the info@infocville.com account. I wonder what happens if I put that out here in full text. The internet seems more predatory than ever, a reflection of these times.
Twenty six-years ago I had not yet moved back to Roanoke with my partner at the time. We had a nice life there and I often wonder if we would have stayed together longer if we had been allowed to keep growing there. Coming to Charlottesville ripped up roots that had a lot of potential, but here I am, in a place where I perceive myself to have responsibilities and act accordingly.
I should arrive in about 24 hours. It is an overnight trip and I'm going to travel light but am not entirely sure what I have that is suitable. I am staying in a place within walking distance of downtown, I think, and I'm curious to know what I will do.
Will I look things up or will I just play the day as it comes? I know I don't really want to work on the train. I want to soak up the landscape that has been my home for all of these years, and likely the place I will continue to be. I think about escape but the work I do here feels important enough to keep doing.
But what will I think tomorrow? Will memories come back of possibility? I was establishing myself as a reporter. What if the podcasting had taken off there? But then again, I would not have had the experiences I have now that allows me to be the independent I am now.
I am glad that I am here. I have no regrets. What I feel is different, like wondering if there is a future in making connections up and down the Northeast Regional as it travels between Christiansburg in the future and the northeast now.
For now I need to think about moving the stones across the table as I piece together another piece of the mosaic.
 |
| One of my very first times as a reporter in the field was to be in this space when the bridge was announced. I think. That was 1995. I don't have records that go back that far, do I? |
Comments