7/26/00
Day 125
Manchester Center, VT
1630.4 miles

I spent last night in a little shack above the ski area on Stratton Mountain.  Tonight I had planned to stay at Spruce Peak shelter and then hitch into Manchester tomorrow, but I saw a register entry about a place to stay for only $10 a night so I continued on into town and called.  Turns out it's a couple of girls (referred to in the registers as, "the hippy chicks") who have a spare room with 4 bunks in their condo they let hikers stay in.  The problem is they're 8 miles out of town.  So I'll catch a ride with them tomorrow to run my errands and mail this letter.

This is my last sheet of paper on this pad, but I want to try to add one point to the previous (7/24) discussion about why I quit my job the 2nd time.  And that is:  why I quit the 1st time.  My motivation had to do with my being fed up about having had to work for 3 years on a project that I didn't believe in, that I thought was a really bad idea for the hospital.

But like all big decisions in my life it seemed like there were multiple factors both for and against quitting.  Using the analogy of a scale, I guess I then try to assign weights (values) to each item and then see how it balances out.  What I noticed is that the biggest, heaviest item by far on the side of not quitting was simply:  fear.  And this irked me and made up my mind for me.  I didn't like the idea that fear was going to run my life.  (And I've discovered that once you quit a job the first time, it's much easier the second time around.)