Agonizing over decisions and life direction can have bad side effects. Yesterday I left Anchorage in a state of confusion. I got in Brendan's car with his two dogs and started the two hour drive back to Talkeetna - merely as something useful to do as I mulled over my recent job offer and the general chaos that was my future outlook. Should I stay in Anchorage and take a good job as a water engineer for a big private consultancy? Should I seek highly paying, unsustainable, 2-weeks-on-2-weeks-off work for a petrol company on the North Slope (far North of Alaska). Should I continue to pursue a penniless existance of travel and adventure seeking? Should I ever grow up?
I decided to go to Fred Meyers, one of America's favorite, enormous supermarket chains. I bought tomato juice, swiss cheese, a can of beans. Back out in the parking lot it was dusk, the new-found autumn darkness was creeping over the daytime, a reminder of the coming winter, and dark nights. I put the groceries away as the bored dogs looked on. I grabbed the cheese and juice and climbed into the drivers seat, turning on the ignition. I opened the juice and took a sip. I took the packet of cheese and began to fuss away at opening the fierce plastic. I was spaced out. I was really thinking about work and life and alaska and australia.
WHAM!! Suddenly everything stopped. Or started. I looked up and somehow there was another car pressed up against the front of mine. I thought, someone's run into me! But somehow they'd managed to slide the side of their car into the front of my car. A rough young guy came over and asked if I was ok. I looked at him blankly. What happened? Hold on, they'd managed to slide the side of their car into the front of my car...I'd smashed into their car! So I started up the engine and backed-off my rammed inertia, and got out of the car. I confessed to the guy I had just spaced out and rolled through the carpark unknowingly, that I was an idiot, and that I was having a bad day. He left and I started crying.
Then came more tears and distress at my hopelessness, worry about my Australian drivers licence, the fact that Brendan hadn't got his car registration in the mail yet, and waiting for the owners of the car to arrive.
The owners of the car arrived finally, and were suprised that their brand new car had been violated while they were innocently buying their weeks worth of eggs and potato chips, but mostly they thanked me for staying! They thanked me! Lovely people. We called the cops and an affected, proud, self-conscious man arrived on his fancy motorcycle. Dismounted. Turns out fancy pants once had a wife who was Australian, and he appeared easy to charm even though his experience with the Australian had been unsatisfactory. He said, 'she woke me one morning and told me that she never loved me and that she had just married me for the citizenship. I rang a friend and got her deported.'
Needless to say, we got the paperwork filled-out, and I turned the car around and headed back for Anchorage not trusting myself on the roads with the moose all the way to Talkeetna. Within a day I had accepted the job offer, figuring life's expensive.
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