Starting a new year is pretty much routine by the time you are my age.
No late party so no hangover.
A day off to relax and watch a parade or football game.
This New Years Day is feeling much different.
Today I keep thinking that this is how I felt during my last finals week at the University of Oregon.
I was reaching the end of a long journey that had taken 16 years and gone down many paths.
Sometimes confident and successful, other times, not so much.
But I had made it to the end.
My education was completed.
Now it was time for a new passage.
This one through life as an adult.
Lots of paths over an even longer time, 42 years.
Husband, father, ex-husband, husband, ex-husband, husband, grand father!
A constant has been that I always was working or looking for work.
By the end of ths year that will change.
I'll be retired.
I'll still be a husband, father and grand father but I won't be working.
I'm anxious but sort of melancholy.
Work has provided me with more than money.
I've met many interesting and good people, as well as some real wanks!
Work has taken me to places out of the ordinary, Panama, Colombia, England, Germany and cities in the US, out of Oregon.
Work has shown me that people can be good or bad, selfish and charitable, doesn't matter the language they speak. People are people.
Work has been another extension of my education, along with life in general.
I'm not sure what the next journey is going to be like, right now all I really care us that its a long and interesting one that keeps teaching me.
Maybe I'll get around to organizing The Cult of Bob the Eternal Procrastinator and finish writing The Book of Bob.
Some day.
