[Excerpted from How I Became an Urban Camper available at lulu.com]
I love watching television, and cable TV and I are on really good terms. Due to financial considerations, I went from having every cable channel available to just basic cable as cable costs continue to soar. So, staying at a hotel where I can watch HBO is always a treat. There’s always at least one movie that I want to see while there, as well as some of HBO’s other programming and specials. However, when I first started actually staying in my hotel room instead of just using it as a place to sleep and change clothes, rest and relaxation were the main reasons for my stays. I’d bring all of my spa products – shower gels, lotions, nail care kit, shampoos – and favorite snacks and beverages.
I also stopped going out to the local restaurants in the area and getting food delivered so I could spend every minute possible in my hotel room. I have developed a relationship with my Cottage Inn delivery guy who gets my order to me in record time due to my generous tips. I’m partial to their hot wings, Greek salad, and subs. I know most of the hotel staff, also, and they seem to be glad to see me when I arrive. I started taking a class for work and found out I could get a lot more work done researching and writing papers at the Comfort Inn in a quiet room with no ringing telephone, street traffic from the busy thoroughfare where I live near downtown Toledo, and sounds of the neighborhood children playing, which I actually enjoy when I’m not trying to think.
I was at the Comfort Inn writing a paper for class on Valentine’s Day in 2007, when the whole city closed down due to a huge snow storm. I got an “A” in my class. The next year, I had to take another class and got a laptop to take an online course. Of course, I spent many hours at the hotel using its wireless network to participate in discussion threads and complete assignments for my marketing class at the University of Phoenix. When I retired in 2008, from both my week day and weekend jobs, I started working part time as a consultant and using my writing talent to re-write a play I’d written two decades earlier and to write a curriculum guide for professionals in my field.
I completed both the play re-write and the curriculum guide at the Secor Comfort Inn. I also used the wireless service to create a website, start several blogs, including one in OpenSalon on salon.com (I’m FrogTown Diva), and publish my curriculum guide on scribd.com. Finding my home away from home the perfect place to create and write, I finally did something I’d wanted to do for years. I wrote a novel New Year’s week 2009. It took only four days because I’d been plotting the story in my head for over twenty-five years. I also wrote a couple of inspirational books(“Finding God’s Secret Place: A Spiritual Journey,” published on scribd.com and “Ten Cent Faith,” published on lulu.com as is my novel, all under pen names).
While at breakfast in the lobby, I struck up a conversation with a guy from Mississippi who was in town on a work assignment and when he found out I’m a writer, he told me about an online publication that was looking for reporters. He had been unable to find the publication’s website, so I gave it a try since I have fierce googling skills. I found the site and submitted an application. I got a job with the publication and wrote my first half dozen or so articles at the Secor Comfort Inn. I also wrote more plays there, including some one-act dramas I submitted to a theatre festival for inclusion in a readers’ theatre series, and created some proposals for my consultant job.
Now, if I have work to do that requires time, focus, a quiet setting, and intense thought, I just check into the hotel. I’ve even used my ChoiceRewards points whenever I need to do a project. It works every time. Only sometimes I go to the hotel to work and end up just resting and relaxing because I’m so tired. Who knew retirement would be so busy? There are still times when I go to the hotel just to rest and relax, but either way I always enjoy my stay. I even stayed at a Comfort Inn when I visited my home state, Texas, to go to my 40th Class Reunion July Fourth weekend in 2009, and spent a couple of nights there while in Houston. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay for the room so I didn’t get any rewards points. But I did get some when I stayed in a Quality Inn in Winston-Salem, North Carolina the next month while attending a theatre festival there.
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