Endings and Beginnings

I am what some might term limbo. I am no longer an MBA1. That's right, I successfully completed MAP (though I don't have the grade yet ... but then again we don't really do grades ... more on that some other time). The project came to a good conclusion. I am pleased with the final product and with the process in general and am toying with a new career path because of it. And no, I am not talking about low end kitchen cabinetry. We'll see where it goes after this summer and after some serious reflection and a feasibility study. There is much to ponder when it comes to career choice. This is really the last time I will be making this kind of choice unless I decide to throw something similar into a midlife crisis though I won't know about that until it happens and it is about 20 years away so there really is no point in thinking about it in detail now, especially since I have more pressing career choices to consider. But, where was I? Oh, yes, MAP. It is a heady thing to have a CEO clap for you. Just sayin'.  

And so my first year as an MBA student has come to a close. I packed up what I would need for the summer and made the trek to my parents' house where I will be living this summer while I work in Rhode Island. I have never really lived in my parents' house on the south shore of Boston. They moved here while I was in college and so I have never really had a room. There is a room that I use whenever I come home and my mom uses it as a sewing room for the other 360 days a year so I suppose for the purpose of this discussion we can call it "my room". In making the shift from sewing room to bedroom we emptied out one of the closets and shoved in with all the fabric and projects that I am sure my mom will do someday were a few boxes of my things. Among this random collection of childhood memories (including presidential fitness awards, science fair reports in which my teacher deemed me a 'careful and thoughtful young scientist' for my expert use of organization, procedure and diagrams, newspaper clippings of my rhythmic gymnastics teammate when she made the Olympic team and of a mock Democratic Convention that my grade school held when I was in 6^th grade) I found this list entitled "When I am 32". I don't know when I wrote it but if I had to guess I would say I was 11 or so and at that point in my life this is how I saw my future:

• When I am 32 I will be married
  
• When I am 32 I will have 2 children
  
• When I am 32 I will wake up at 6:00 am
  
• When I am 32 I will coach rhythmic gymnastics
  
• When I am 32 I might be an artist
  
• When I am 32 I might be working at a vet
  
• When I am 32 I will have 5 dogs
  
• When I am 32 I will be having fun 

I am now only three years away from when I am to have accomplished all of these things and know that some of them like being a gymnastics coach, working at a vet and having five dogs are never going to happen. Not when I'm 32, not ever. Other things are possibilities, like being married though for the having two kids to happen by the time I am 32 I would need to get married yesterday. So maybe not the two kids thing. As for the rest of it I am totally there. The art I practice is business (I realize that most people don't think of business as art but then again most people don't know the truth about financial statements and how you can make them say whatever you want them to say), I do wake up at 6:00 am and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, and most importantly I am having fun. So much fun. 

Most recently this fun has taken the form of an afternoon at Fenway with my dad. The Red Sox lost but there is something about sitting in an old ballpark with your dad on a warm afternoon that can't help but make you happy. Even if you do manage to get mustard on your shirt.