Reluctant but excited

The pin indicates where I'm going. Car-train-plane-bus outlines
tomorrow's journey. Leaving at 7.30am and getting to the
conference eight hours later (with a couple of hrs wait at
the airport), I'm going to be travel weary...again.

Tomorrow I'm hopping back on an aeroplane. I'm actually not that keen to do that, but it isn't an overnight flight, thankfully. I'm just flying to Melbourne, about 2 1/2 hrs.

On the other hand, I am keen to go. I'm attending an Australian Christian Writers Conference for the weekend. As an Aussie who spends most of my time in Japan, I'm rather isolated from other writers in Australia, actually writers in the English-speaking world in general. 

I wonder if it will mostly be people who write or have written books who will go? There seems to be writers of books and then other writers. At this point in my life, I'm the latter, but quite happy to learn from the former.

Having organised, led, and taught at five small writers workshops in Japan it will be interesting to see what a larger event looks like. Perhaps I'll get some ideas.

What am I saying? I'm sure that I'm going to come home full to bursting with ideas. Many of which will probably lay dormant for months or years because now isn't the right time to activate them.

I hope that this will also be a good time of networking. Perhaps some further publishing opportunities will present themselves. I know that at events like this publishers are present and you are supposed to present them with book proposals. I have no such thing in the pipeline. But you still never know who you'll meet or opportunities you'll encounter when you put yourself into a situation like this.

So despite my reluctance to travel interstate again so soon, I'm bursting with anticipation to see what God is going to do with this weekend away.