Pieces of Tartan (part one): The Journey Before

One of my oldest and dearest LJ friends, gwendraith, made me promise to locate the journal I kept about my trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. I traveled there a few years after college, quitting the job I had at the time (or at least, trying to) in order to travel with an acting troupe as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

So, about a month ago, one afternoon after work, I traveled to Josie's, and ventured down into the cellar, to sort through all the boxes that I have down there, filled with scripts and scribbles representing thirty years of my life. I have them all labeled by subject: “Childhood,” “College,” “The Cranky Thirties”...

Fortunately, I was able to locate my Edinburgh journal fairly quickly, and found a few extra things, besides. I drove back to the apartment with the boxes that contained the journal, and I have to admit, I'm having a great time revisiting that period of my life.

The journal that contains my Edinburgh trip was written in 1989. I started it right after I had quit a job at Aetna Insurance, which I had left because I wanted to focus more on my writing. And I did do, too, much to the chagrin of my parents, who weren't thrilled watching their college graduate son taking up space in their house, staying up late at night, and sleeping until noon. It was like college, all over again.

I do like some of the lines I scribbled, though. Such as this one:

"All diary writers write for a secret audience. They yearn for someone to pick up the stories of their lives, and read all their secrets."

Imagine what life would have been like for me if Live Journal had been around, back then!
But it is true, isn't it? Even these blogs that we post--aren't we really all, secretly, hoping that they'll be picked up and embraced by a larger audience?

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So, how did I end up in Scotland, back in 1989? As I mentioned, after graduating from college, I spent about a year and a half working as a claims adjuster for Aetna, and did so well that I had actually been offered a promotion. Instead of accepting it, however, contrarian that I am, I quit the job, determined to live off of the $3,000 that I had managed to save up. I was hoping to heed the advice of one of my college professors, a woman named Julia Steiny, who had advised me to run off to California and work at a shoe factory, so that I might possibly become a better writer, as a result of learning what life was really about.

Much to Julia’s irritation, I stayed put in North Eldredge, took up with a beautiful young woman with a one-year-old child (yes, I’m talking about Josie and Annie), and spent months staying up all night at my parents and sleeping until one in the afternoon, at which point, I would stumble out of bed and dutifully record the dreams I had had the night before.

This lifestyle choice inevitably led to the following sorts of entries:

"Dad woke me up at seven this morning, hollering at me that I was lazy and an embarrassment to the family. Oy vay! Do I have to put up with this shit?"

However, while I was living this peculiarly delicious brand of la vida loca, I did manage to find the time to visit an old professor, Bill Hutchinson. Although I harbor some ill feelings toward the college that I graduated from, to this day, I dearly love Bill, who was a dream-weaver for literally thousands of students who entered into the theater department at Rhode Island College.

True to form, the minute he saw me, he started casting a new dream for me: would I consider serving as assistant director and producer for a small group of actors from RIC and Trinity Repertory Company that were planning to participate in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August? I said yes, immediately, and a few weeks later, handed him one-third of the money in my bank account. (P.S.: I don’t think I told my parents that part.)

My father and Nana were appalled with this decision. However, my mother just grinned and said, "Ted, if you’re looking for approval for that, the best way to get it is to just go out and do it. Otherwise, you’ll just be sitting in your room, going nowhere."

To appease my father, however, I did continue looking for a job, and, a bit to my own surprise, actually landed one.
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