Two decades past – End of the Day for March 10, 2014

I had lunch today with some co-workers — that is, co-workers from a job I held over 20 years ago.

My friend, JoAnn who I first met while working at Walt Disney Imagineering connected up with a few other people from our days at WDI and we had an informal lunch at Hugo’s in Studio City. I had a few odd thoughts during our lunch. First, I can’t believe that I even had a career an IT over 20 years ago. It seems so distant it is almost as if it didn’t happen sometimes. Thinking back to even earlier jobs, such as the dial-up email service for music industry folks and the mutual fund company I worked for seems even deeper in the mists of memory. These jobs seem like they were worked by someone else and I only have their memories somehow. These people we quite different people than who I am now. I find it hard to understand who I was and what I was experiencing at those time. You can only really by the sum total of your life experiences and I have had so many more experiences since then.

Back in 1986, when I arrived in Los Angeles, I was 22 years old and had been married about 7 days. Rosanne and I left Cleveland the day after our wedding and took a leisurely 7 day drive to California in the 24′ Hertz Penske moving van with manual transmission and no air conditioning. We saw a lot of America and learned a lot about one another in those 7 days and the nearly 28 years that have passed since. Now, here I am 50 years old, with a 16 year old son and yet another new world in front of me. I can’t even imagine how I will feel when another 20 years passes. Who knows what adventures we will have in that time.

Of course, seeing other people who are now 20 years older than when they were your co-workers makes you reflect on your own age, too. I feel that, looking in the mirror, I have changed dramatically and yet people always seem to recognize me on street even if they haven’t seen me in years so maybe I haven’t changed as much as I think. The changes are there, though and can’t be ignored, only savored. I think I have lived a lot and done a lot in my 50 years and look forward to doing even more in the (fingers crossed) next 50!

Previously on End of the Day:

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