Lunch hour adventures

I had planned to have an adventure in my lunch hour today, but I felt very unadventurous when I got up this morning. I'd decided to invite a bunch of people to a pub quiz last night, a few were friends, but some were 'acquaintances I wanted to be friends with'. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, it was a fun night, all the better because organising something like this wasn't the sort of thing an unadventurous me would have done a few months ago. I didn't regret it even when I got up this morning after only a couple of hours sleep, starting work in that still-drunk but heading for a hangover inbetween state, and with vague and unpleasant recollections of getting up in the night for a perfunctory puke.

Another, less positive change, is that six months ago I wouldn't have thought of lying to my boss. This morning at 6am I switched off my alarm and decided 'I'm working from home today'. Of course I knew no one would believe my 'alarm didn't go off story,' especially the colleagues who'd been at the pub with me last night. But I didn't care.

In some ways I was worried about this new unconscientious me. I used to take pride in trying to be be the hardest worker in the office, the best at my job. Now my head is so full of adventures that I find it hard to be enthusiastic about the dull work routines, I've done the job so long I don't need to use my brain anymore, so I keep thinking 'this is boring' and checking my IWAA inbox.

I'm still professional enough to care about my work though, so this lack of concentration does upset me. I've arranged to talk to my manager tomorrow, I know he hasn't noticed an effect on my work, and it is a very recent development, but I thought it better to say something myself before it gets noticed and he starts calling me into the office. Of course I won't mention adventures, or stickers, but I may suggest I need more of a challenge. Is a career adventure possible perhaps?

But back to my lunch hour adventure, as I said I was working from home today, and I'd actually decided not to take a lunch break at all, but to finish early so that I could be with my daughter. So a lunch hour adventure seemed to be an impossibility, but then, at the end of the day, just as I was waiting for my daughter to get home from school, I was browsing a web forum and came across a link to an odd web site - writeaprisoner.com Of course the forum post was drawing attention to the ridiculousness of this unintentionally funny site.

"I long for affection and intimate attention from an intelligent, mature, and exciting man." Incarcerated For: Murder

But then I clicked on a link, and there he was. I found Caleb Ellis

Caleb said, 'Im intrigued by a woman with an adventurous spirit, even if its a silent spirit!

If my words spark some degree of interest and you have a desire to do some exploring, write me, and I will respond.'

I didn't look at any more prisoners, this strange website didn't seem so funny any more. It was officially my 'lunch hour break' now, and I had apparently stumbled across my lunch hour adventure!

I don't know if writing to prisoners really does qualify as an 'adventure', but it is certainly something odd that I wouldn't normally do. You've probably noticed that most of my 'adventures' can be described in this same way. So I decided to write to Caleb, and of course to tell him all about IWAA.

Incarcerated For: Aiding and Abetting Murder

I hope he writes back, it sounds like he's had an interesting life. Perhaps he knows what an adventure is? And I wonder, if I can have a lunch hour adventure at my own desk, perhaps even a prisoner could find adventure too? I feel bored and unchallenged by my dull office job, but if anyone locked up for most of the day for years and years could find adventure too I'd know that IWAA was doing something very special. I just hope Caleb's suggestion for my adventure database doesn't involve people getting hurt.