And the days go by...

I came home for Christmas in 2001 from Colorado; at a party, someone gave me the name and number of someone who worked for a company looking to expand its IT staff. I don't know why I called, exactly; perhaps it had something to do with a conversation with my nephew, Mickey, who was eight at the time.

"So you're a grownup, right?" I conceded that I was.

"And so you could live wherever you want to?" I concurred that yes, that's pretty much how it works.

"Then why don't you want to live near us and see us all the time?"

One way or the other, I called. I got a job as a Programmer Analyst. Truly, if I had had the faintest idea of how spectacularly unqualified for the job I was, I would not have had the nerve to apply, but I got the job; I drove home to Colorado, packed up / threw away my belongings and rented a truck.

Despite the fact that I didn't even know what I didn't know about being a Programmer Analyst, I muddled my way through. We were put up for adoption a couple of years ago and moved as a team to a new company, and what I do has changed somewhat over the years, but it is reasonable to say that I've had the same job for five years. This represents a level of stability that, frankly, surprises me.

On the other hand, calling it stability isn't really accurate. The team I joined 5 years ago was comprised of 10 people. About a year later, there were 14 people, but only two of us from the ten I started with -- me and David. Five years in, there are three of us; roughly 3 dozen people have gone -- or come and gone -- since I started. I used to keep a list, but I stopped.

Another co-worker had a group photo that had been taken about the time she started -- when we were at our peak of 14. As they left -- got fired, burnt out, whatever -- she scribbled out their faces. I found it in the top drawer of her desk after she got fired, her own face disappeared under a violent application of marker. As I stared down, David and I smiled up -- with confidence or arrogance or just because we had been told to -- into the fluorescent light of her office.

David and I have been working together, day in, day out, for five years as of yesterday. Mickey has become an adolescent, too cool to care where I live. Tim moved off of my list of co-workers and into my house. At some point, I became an adult; it didn't happen at 18, when I joined the military, or 28, when I realized that I would never be a rock star.

I have done a lot of leaving, rushing downstream past rocks and trees, cities and towns, bumping into people, moving on. I have become a rock at the edge of the river; things rush around me. I see more this way.