It has been exactly 10 years since my first post. 10 years since I accepted that job offer. The person who agonized about that decision a decade ago sounds a very different one from the one ruminating those memories now. But that 36 year old was a realist. And I should thank that younger woman for where I am today, for I think you do really go on as you start. That day, when she wrote that post, all she knew was that she intended to make it work. She had no idea where she was going and she had no idea how she meant to get there. Ten years into the marathon, and along the way the problems have changed, conditions have changed, priorities have changed. Health and wealth have changed, the joys and pleasures have changed, the cause for angst and tears have changed. But this 46 year old is certainly still at it. Making it work.
Along the way, there were those who gave up and moved back to the predictable path of the west. The many who survived are as diverse as the country they came into. Some worked their skin off, on the bench, off the bench, day and night, their students dropping like flies after a Hit. Some picked up every piece of scrap they could find and designed it into a piece of art. Some lived in their own little world as if the rest of it did not matter, plodding along slowly but very steadily. Some fibbed their way through, tricking and treating as they went. Some hung onto their umbilical cords, tugging and pulling those connections, dropping the hollowed names and twitching those magic wands. Some acquired new godfathers and custom-designed their wares to suit the new customer. Some even decided to take it a bit easy and walk through corridors without ruffling any feathers, serving the ever-changing masters with no particular ambition but to exist. But all had one thing in common. They came committed to stick around. They were not on a reconnaissance mission they were in the battle heart and soul.
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