Life is Different Now

I was thinking this morning about how different things are for me (professionally) in a way I couldn't have imagined back when I was in the thick of life in the corporate sector during the dot com era. You know... scores of young, attractive and hip coworkers (the men with their long sideburns, the women wearing stilletto heels and all black, and all members of both sexes wearing the requite black, plastic, clunky-framed eyeglasses that were everywhere in the late '90's). Everyone sitting at their ultra-modern desks, tapping away at their laptops, or answering their incessantly ringing cellphones (saying "oh, sorry, I need to take this..." with an air of self-importance). Or, playing foozeball or pingpong (because it seemed that every office in Boston had one in those days) and planning the 'team offsite' (that would be company-sanctioned meetings at the pub next door during happy hour). And that ubiquitous feeling that WHAT WE ARE DOING IS GOING TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE WAY PEOPLE (fill in the blank) that every company seemed to have back then.

Yeah, it's kind of different now. My coworkers wear a lot of khaki and pleated-front pants. The calls that they have to take in the middle of a meeting are more likely than not from a babysitter or a child. They drive minivans. They eat at the Olive Garden. As an organization, our mission seems to be more about 'getting the work done and getting the heck out of here by 5 on the nose', than about revolutionizing anything.

I don't know if this will be the place for me forever, but for now, it's a very 'mom-friendly' job, and I'm staying put. It's just funny to think about how you never know where you'll be in five or ten years. Certainly, back in 1999, as I sat and watched the view out of my office window from 54 Canal Street, I couldn't have imagined myself here. Yet somehow, it feels like the right place to be now.