Five Years Ago

Clearing out Jada's first floor bedroom and moving her up to her new third-floor bedroom has evoked some reminiscing on Amy and my part. For the last time the walls and floor of that first floor room was bare was five summers ago, before Jada arrived.

Five years ago this month, I was still working at The Enterprise Center. I was working insane hours as usual, and the month of May was particularly crazy for me because of our significant reliance on student interns: May and September are busier than usual because they are high work-flow times combined with old interns already gone and new ones not yet arrived or not sufficiently oriented.

To add to the chaos of that time, I was taking two classes at Fels towards my Masters in Government Administration: a public leadership class and a public management class. So May brought final papers and exams in both classes. And, I was trying to pass out of a third class, Statistics, by doing the final project - without having taken the class, and without the benefit of working on it a little by little over the course of the semester with the help of the professor. And, I was writing up an outline for an independent study concept I was pitching to my advisor to do over the summer.

So essentially I was working a full-time job at a peak time while juggling the equivalent of four grad-level classes. And, we were getting ourselves ready for Jada: home prep, adoption paperwork, travel plans, and emotional prep.

And yet, for all the craziness, I believe I was probably freer and saner then than I am now. So I look back on those days of work and school busyness and parental anticipation with a little bit of glow and poignancy. But, I do not prefer then to now.