And on the seventh day ...

I decided to go golfing.

Yesterday was a full, fun day. Breakfast at Aunt Mary's on East State to let another person I talked to know I was no longer at the Register Star. Then the 9 a.m. meeting, which was more intriguing than I thought it would be. I'm definitely not closing that door. Then a swing by Alpine Bank to let management there know what had happened. Lunch at Greenfire with another person I was seeking advice from and sounding out. Then a trip to the Rockford chamber of commerce for a meeting. A drop in to the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. Then a trip to the library for some alterations on a resume that I had to resend.

Finally, I picked girls up from school, sent out a couple of emails to set meetings up for next week, had dinner at Karen's and went to a sales presentation at night.

Home at 8:30 p.m.

It was exciting and sobering at the same time. I'm going down two parallel tracks. There's an opening right now that several believe I'm qualified for and yesterday I had three different people pledging to make calls to lobby on my behalf or actually do it right in front of me. When you do one thing for so long you start to wonder if you can do anything else. Yesterday, everyone I met with said they believed I could thrive in this role. I'm moving as quickly as possible on this one.

The other track, perhaps a move into banking, is going to take many more meetings to see what level I should start at and which organization would be best for me. No one has said I couldn't do it, it's just that my lack of experience and financial background makes me more of a risk. I get that. I wouldn't want to jump in and drown.

The chamber trip opened my eyes to a couple of other opportunities. At every stop, I went through the obligatory "what happened" story. I know I'm going to get that for a long time. Everyone is shocked that I'm no longer at the paper. During the recession, when I would talk to companies or people who'd been let go, I'd react the same way. They'd tell they weren't shocked. They could see the train coming. I feel the same way. I'm not really shocked. At a couple of the meetings we were reminiscing about some of the larger projects I was able to launch and maintain for several years until space, staffing became an issue -- creating an economic scorecard, producing a quarterly real estate map, tracking bank solvency and public company earnings. I look at those projects now as preparation for the next career.

Today, I'm golfing with a former co-worker. We've played hundreds of rounds together and talked through thousands of story ideas. Today, the talk likely will be on what's next. I have to convince him there's life after journalism. I had several ex-journalists tell me the same thing, but you don't really know until you get out there.

When the round is over I have three phone calls to make, hopefully setting up more meetings for next week, and then a couple of days to master the unemployment system before hitting the ground running on Monday.

And the Reds beat the Cubs yesterday -- despite Jorge Soler -- so all is right in my world.