Once in a Blue Moon

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies.

Blogging During that Swimming After-glow

Tonight is the last night of the year and a blue, full moon. After our swim just now, Pat told me that the last one occurred on New Year's in 1990. God, I was 24 then and I'd never trade now for then, even as I seem to be going through a mid-life-what's-my-legacy struggle currently.

Back then, my pet, Gwen, was a Siamese fighting fish in a simple, small, glass fish-bowl, or had she already died by then? Gwen was the only other living being in my home then, which was an efficiency apartment in Chicago on Marshfield St. near Ashland Ave. -- a block from the Y, where I swam, and three blocks from my therapist.

My love-life was super-active, but not yet happily so. There was a series of lovely women with whom I became involved at that time, but none who compelled, or was compelled by, me ultimately.

By the second month of 1990, I would leave my job as a client rep for Video Monitoring Services, figuring I would enter a prestigious English Ph.D. program...except after I left my job, I learned that all of the programs to which I had applied had rejected me.

In short, by the start of 1990, I had no love, no job and was renting a sad, little home.

Perspective

Compared to 1990, 2010 is miraculous:

For nearly two decades so far, I have had Pat's dedicated love and she, mine; nearly 20 years of continuous, meaningful employment, including a six-month assignment in India and business trips to a huge number of exciting cities around the world; a home I'm proud of, and which we're working toward owning through our mortgage, compared with my renting 20 years ago; 3/4s of a Masters degree from the best school in its class and one of the best schools in the world; consistently healthy eating, where it was not prior, that is, where it included too much sugar prior; two lively cat-siblings as pets; and more. All of this should be instructive, i.e., it should help me remember the proverb that it's always darkest before the dawn. Of course, there were two sad times: my inability to become pregnant and my being diagnosed with otosclerosis, which meant that I could go deaf at any time with no warning. Neither of these were predictable events.

What could the dawn of the next 20 years bring? I'll respond in the order I think it's chronologically-likely: even more of a sense of purpose in my work at IBM, e.g., expanding the number of people my work helps, and its scope still further; the completion of my Masters program; watching our niece Zoe and nephew Zach each graduate from high school and go to college; having some of my writing published; visiting Israel with Pat; marrying Pat legally; re-learning trop (cantillation) and chanting from the Torah at our synagogue; watching our nephews Sam and Max graduate from junior high school, then high school and then go on to college; seeing the four nephews and niece finding partners with whom to settle down; becoming great-aunts; losing family or friends to illness or old age; continuing our swimming throughout our later-years; and at least a couple of sad, unpredictable events, God forbid, but it's natural that they would occur, unfortunately.

Never will I consult a psychic, as I'm superstitious; nor am I comfortable with having suggested what's possible in the future myself as I did here, but I also think that it's probably a good idea to have a vision of what I'd like to do and see in the coming years.