JavaOne (again)

[bcholmes]

Oh sure. No sooner do I start to ponder not going, and they send me an acceptance of my paper.

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[elissaann.livejournal.com]

1999 and 2000 were very stressful years. In 12 months, I experienced 3 family members in the hospital, the death of my father, the breakup of a relationship I thought would lead to marriage, the loss of a job I'd held for 18 years, and the beginning of a new job.

The new job: administrator/bookkeeper for my friend Gerry's start-up company. (I shall ask him if he knows you!) He did Java training, and he was developing a product (which never did get finished).

I was taken to Java One as a Booth Babe for the training part of the business. Every day, I returned East Coast phone calls from 6 to 9 AM, worked at the booth all day, went to whatever company dinner I was expected at, and collapsed exhausted at night.

The final day, I ran into a West Coast friend who dragged me to some of the parties that night. (He was celebrating the sale of a product, that very day, that made him suddenly wealthy.) I stuck around San Francisco for a few days to hang out with my family, see friends, and give out a music award in memory of my father.

As I lay on a friend's massage table that week, it suddenly hit me that I was too tired to go on. My friend was talking about how she had quit her corporate job a few years before to take care of a sick parent. I realized that it was possible to just stop, even though I didn't know what would happen next.

When I got back to the city, I told Gerry that I was taking the summer off. I never went back. That was almost 7 years ago.