On the roads.

Over the last two days, I've done a lot of  driving to work with a client in regional Victoria.  I quite like driving on the highway.  It gives me time to think and I enjoy listening to the radio.

I was driving a lipstick pink hire car this time.  Today I was dressed in a pink shirt (I packed before I picked up the hire car).  I felt ridiculously matched.  People were looking at me in my lipstick pink car.  It was very girly and initially I didn't like it.  Then I got used to it and I quite like the colour now.

It goes back tomorrow.

When I picked it up, I waited in a line for twenty minutes.  A large group of tourists were hiring several cars.  Their English speaking skills were limited.  It took a long time.  I signed my paperwork, paid and was gone within five minutes.

While driving I was treated to a double rainbow.

Some of the things I thought about:

• I started to map out when I will take a holiday.  Working freelance means that it can be easy to forget to plan a break - especially in the first year.  I've discovered that I needed to understand the rhythms of demand and accept that.  I know that January is dead, so I've decided to schedule time and I have already started telling clients that I am unavailable during this time.
• I marvelled at the impatience and recklessness of many drivers.  I worried for one driver who looked like they may have been falling asleep.
• Why couldn't I open my ereader this morning?  I'm deeply into "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen and enjoying it immensely.  I read it over dinner as I dined on my own at the hotel restaurant last night.  I read it before I went to sleep last night.  I took it to breakfast, but could not get the book to open.  Very frustrating and one of the drawbacks of digital - this would never happen with a real book!
• I worry for the missing Melbourne woman Jill Meagher.  Listening to ABC radio (where she works) meant I heard a lot.  I hope she's all right.  I can't imagine how her loved ones must be feeling.
• I appreciated the landscape, bathed in gorgeous pink light as the sun set.  
• I cursed the sun as I drove right into its light.
• I pondered the validity of dead gangland boss Carl Williams' family launching a civil damages suit against the state for negligence (he turned police informant and was murdered while in maximum security).  I didn't reach a conclusion, but it's an interesting question.
• I spent time thinking about the changes I had seen in the group I've been working with.  One woman was so much more engaged, she was like a different person.  Another man who had been hard to convince, thawed and acknowledged to me (in front of the group) when I handed him an intellectual "diamond".  Another woman was so angry at everyone and everything, I wondered what her life is like.

And so it goes.

Even though the beds at the hotel I stayed in last night are the most comfortable beds in the world, I will be very glad to sleep in my own again tonight.

What have you been thinking about today?