Wanderlust

I'm beginning to get a sense of the weight that will be lifted from me when we no longer own the store. It's manifesting itself as I dream of traveling to far flung places nearly every night lately. I smell new adventures and freedom!

Here are just a few things I won't miss while I'm off exploring the world:

• Enjoying an amazing book and then coming to a passage that means I can't freely handsell it in a market where the most often asked question is "Is there anything in this book that will offend me?"
  
• Coming to work sick or reworking carefully laid plans because someone else can't work.
  
• Telling Jack over and over and over and over that he has to wait because customers come first (not that it hasn't been good for him to learn patience on occasion!)
  
• Cutting, pasting, typing, saying thousands and thousands of ISBN numbers. And I'm getting out of the business just in time--in January, ISBN numbers are changing from 10 digits to 13.
• Serving customers who, for example, watch their child gnaw on a book and then leave without even offering to pay for it. By the way, I am exercising great retraint in providing only one example of the many varied joys of being open to the public.
  

I need a road trip!