It's pretty obvious, with the recent cut in commissions and the banding together of four major airlines to provide a comparative fare website, that the days of travel agencies selling airfares are almost over. Many agencies, mine included, are now focusing on leisure travel: tour packages, cruises, customized vacations. But we can't all switch to that. What on earth am I going to do if I find myself out of a job in a year or two? I suppose I could try to find work with a corporation in an in-house agency. But oh, god, eight hours a day of corporate travel? I'd go mad. What else, work in a hotel? For a car rental firm? Do reservations for the airlines? No, no, and most likely no (although Southwest Airlines has a certain appeal). But if I look outside the travel industry's lateral moves, the future looks even cloudier.

When it comes right down to it, I have fairly negligible skills. I can type fast. I'm smart, and I learn quickly. I can talk to anybody, absolutely anybody. But I'm not a natural salesperson. I don't like customer service. I can't program to save my life, nor do I like it. And I absolutely loathe being bored on the job. My ideal job has to take all my strengths into account, throw a few curves at me to keep me on my toes, pay me a really generous salary, and leave me alone to get on with my work. I'm used to being autonomous while still being a team player. I doubt that's going to be easy to find in a new career. And let's face it, I'm pretty old to be looking for a new career. Who they gonna hire for that start up job, me with a high school education and a home life or a youngster with a college education and no reason to go home at night?

I really wish we could find a house to buy. I want someone to sell us their house before we become a bad bargain because of a reduction in my income. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything I like, much less love. We've looked at a good 40 houses and townhomes in the last three months, and not one of them causes me to lose sleep at night because we didn't buy it. This week's listings show only four houses in our price range, all of them on extremely busy streets, all of them less than 1000 square feet, and most of them with no yard or garage. It's terribly disheartening. I fear we are going to have to buy a horrible house that doesn't suit us, has no yard for Dixie, has no room for gardening, and reverberates to the sound of the freeway day and night, all in the name of getting our foot in the door.

My foot is getting sore.

Oh, well. It's discouraging, and it's no fun thinking about what to do with the last twenty working years of my life when I thought it was all settled, but what the hell. I'm healthy, and so is John. His job is secure, plus he has a lot of options if he ever decides to leave. We don't have to stop renting, we can afford to live in decent places as long as we're not trying to buy them. Our pets have been enjoying relatively good health this year, and they're always amusing companions. I fulfilled almost all my ambitions for the year, including becoming more active in fandom, paying off half my debts, doubling this diary's readership, making it to at least half of my 1999 travel goals, and spending more time doing creative things like gardening and rubber stamping. I think it's been an awfully good year. I'm not going to complain.

Instead I'm going to concentrate on saving enough money to buy my first car. That's right, I've never owned a car. 42 years old, taken public transportation all my life, thanks very much. But now it's time. If I had a car, I could get to night classes at a community college. If I could take night classes, I'd take the stupid freaking high school Algebra II course I need in order to go on to college math, which is my biggest barrier to getting my degree. If I had a degree I'd be in a much better position to get hired at the kind of salary I'm used to. It seems like a fairly straightforward path. All I need is, well, I don't know how much a beater used car would cost. Maybe $3000? I have $200 in my savings account. Dear me.

It's a good thing I'm such an optimist. If I don't like what the Magic 8-ball says, I just shake it harder and try again. If the ship goes down, I'll strike out for the shore. I'm certain I'll remember how to swim the moment I hit the water.

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