Quiet around here lately

It's as though no one has been blogging. Oh yeah, no one has been blogging!

I'm back from PA where I visited a friend I've known for nearly 25 years. Amazing how time has flown and that we're still in touch after all this time. Between the two of us we've lived in six different states during that time and only WI, where we met, simultaneously.

It makes me wonder what would have happened with my life had I finished college and headed back to Green Bay, where I was born and where my parents and brother still lived, rather than accepting a job and moving to IL. Would I have gotten married younger and had more children? Would I have built a life around the friends I had in high school? It's so hard to say. When I go back to visit my parents in WI I try to see the two friends there I've stayed in touch with over the years. It seems easier to keep in contact with them because I don't have to make much of an effort given that I'm already in the general vicinity at least once a year.

I do wonder about paths not taken sometimes although it's without regret. I'm glad I am where I am and with the people I'm with although I wouldn't mind a more challenging job. But what if, like Kerry the friend I visited this weekend, I'd gone on and earned my MA and PhD? Would I have gone out in the world and done something completely different?

I've been on the career ladder, made it to a point where I could have gone further had I been willing to have no personal life. I don't regret making the decision to stay in Vermont, to prioritize people and place over work. The fulfillment associated with having and raising Sam has been wonderful; it feels so much more important than anything I ever did when I was following my career. It's so cliche but I finally feel a connection to the future that I've never had before.

Still, it's nice to reach into the past and relive some of who I was way back then. It was a nice weekend, slow and carefree, where we spent a majority of the time in the kitchen chatting while Kerry cooked, listening to the music we played way back when. An escape, a glimpse of what might have been, and a reminder that what I have is pretty damn good.