When I Grow Up - a Retrospective

Just thinking - I'd bet the median income of our classmates over time is probably much higher than the national averages. I say that based on the success stories of those classmates that I've read or heard about. It's not that financial success is such a big deal. Other than our having graduated from a small school in a small Iowa town with perhaps no more than a good upbringing and a desire to do well for ourselves and others. And we did just that, it seems.

Maybe others had a goal in life during the time we were in school, but I did not really have one other than a comfortable life, and in fact, until not many years ago was still wondering what I would be when I grew up. Still am. Then it got close enough to the point that there wasn't much more growing up to do and the goals didn't make so much difference. Other than the comfortable life.

Today, May 6, 2011, I turned in my key and walked out of the office where I had worked for the past 3+ years, ready to move on with the part of my life that comes when I do "grow up." In the final 30 days I have thought many times that the goal of life had always been, for me, all about work, not about being retired and being inactive, so this new "life" has yet to prove itself to me. Don't take that wrong, I am not saying retirement is a bad thing at all, it's just that what I am looking at now is so different from the days when Sunday night was the planning night to get ready for the week, scope out the people I was going to meet, the places I was going to go. Going forward, that planning night will be all for me - not the company I work for.

Now there's no looking back except to review this blog about the school and the town "where dreams began." That was nearly 50 years ago for most of us. And those dreams have fulfilled themselves in a variety of ways, creating a number of business owners, top-shelf parents, entrepreneurs, educators, sales guys, maybe nurses or doctors, even a scientist or two. I think about Judy Nelson Holtan, who was the head OR nurse for the first heart transplant undertaken in Houston, TX by Dr Michael DeBakey, as one example of small town made good. That was a huge event - and Northwood-Kensett High School was "in the room", so to speak.

So I can't help but appreciate the town where I grew up, the adults who gave me direction, and the many schoolmates that have been such a big part of my life, even when they were far away. Thanks to all for just being such good folks.