With It

Originally published on my other blog.

My new firm is really with it, at least relative to the last firm. Shiny, new business cards arrived on my fourth day, which seems like a million times better than my last business card experience. When I asked my last boss about business cards, he turned to his clients after a meeting and asked whether or not his employees needed business cards.

Nice.

Let us not mince words: the old boss *wanted* me to go.

Okay: over it. Life goes on.

One of the cool things, from my perspective, about starting over at a new firm is you realize just how many different ways there are to do things. I love this level of learning: where you compare one system to another system. I like to think about the pros and cons; I like the way the comparison allows me to strategize third and forth versions of operating. I think if someone looked at the choices I've made in my life, one could see this love for systems evaluation: I married a foreigner and moved abroad, I had multiple children (not just one), I've lived on three different American coasts (did you remember the third coast? Some of us forget it!), I attended two schools of architecture...and so on.

It's a challenge, though, to live this way. And the older I get, the less I want to be always challenged/challenging. I'll be happy to stay put for a while now. And so far, it really looks like I've chosen well.