This time last year, I had a sidebar feature on my blog that displayed the articles from a year before, so in addition to speculating about major snowstorms that weren’t I was able to look back to New Year 2005. Revisiting my blogging from December 2005 and January 2006, I see that much of it involves travel – to SeeBeyond in LA, to STK in Colorado, to various places in India and the Czech Republic.
Over the last few days, I re-read a lot of those pieces, and then spent a while wondering whether – and how! – to summarize 2006. So many changes, after so long (too long?!) in one groove. New role. New job. New company. New city. New lifestyle. New timezone. New friends. Flexing new muscles (metaphorically and physically).
And loss. Sure. But less than expected. One interesting thought: as we were clearing out 700+ books (in preparation for selling the house), I came across a volume of English landscape photography, given to me by my colleagues at CMC in Hemel Hempstead in 1981 when I left to relocate to the USA (“just for a few years!”). Inside there was a card with 40 or 50 names from the dim, distant past. I don’t think I stayed in contact with any of them after I moved. Compare that with today: I regularly exchange email with people all over the world that I’ve known for years. I’ve reconnected with people I knew 30 or 40 years ago. And so even though life is naturally episodic, the episodes are perhaps less disconnected than they were in years gone by. (Or maybe it’s just age, or indolence, or the pace of life: my mother’s generation seems relatively adept at maintaining webs of friendship spreading across space and time.)
Regrets? Any impulse to point fingers? Well, yes, but not strongly, because I’m so much happier in my new groove, and if it were not for the incompetence of a few Sun executives (now mostly ex-Sun) I’d probably still be there. So perhaps I should thank XXX for fscking things so royally, and YYY for not firing his sorry ass until it was too late. (I guess I feel about the StorageTek acquisition a bit like many people feel about the invasion of Iraq: I’d never have supported it if I’d known how badly the administration would screw it up.)
Anyway, I’m now working for a (potential) customer for the kinds of products that Sun offers. I have to say that it’s… breathtaking to realize the irrelevance of many of the things that seemed important when I was at Sun. Ah, well. It’s also good to recognize the many valuable lessons I learned there that I can apply my new role, and to thank the wise men and women from whom I learned them. (Some are still at Sun, but most have also moved on.)
Enough of this rambling: I have work to do. One challenge I face: what to do with all my CDs. It’s a curious practical and ethical dilemma. I have hundreds of CDs that I’ve ripped into iTunes, and I never need to touch the physical CDs again. But they’re bulky to store, with jewel cases, booklets, and various kinds of fancy packaging. What should I do? I can’t give them away or sell them; I’m a strong believer in not stealing from artists. Physically destroying them feels wrong in so many ways. I wish there were some really efficient way to store just the CDs themselves (perhaps on spindles, like the way they sell blank CD-Rs). And of course I don’t have time to deal with any of this; I’ll be heading back to Seattle tomorrow.
‘Tis a puzzlement….