Saying My Goodbyes

It is a little hard to believe that I am leaving tomorrow for my staging event in Miami and then on to Jamaica on Thursday. I put my initial application in a year ago and its been a long, drawn out wait to this point. Its funny, I was nervous a few weeks ago, and then I got to the point where I was tired of being nervous and just wanted to get started. Now, in the past day or so, I've started to get nervous again. It's probably because I've started saying a few more goodbyes in the past couple of days.

It started at the wedding I went to for a college friend of mine, Jeremy Sample, this past weekend near Scranton, PA (and no, I didn't get a picture of the sign from The Office). The wedding was a lot of fun (hopefully someone will send me a picture that I can post here...). I got to see a bunch of the guys from Phi Psi, got to see Sample's family for the first time since graduation, and, obviously, got to see Sample and Aimee get married. I think that everyone that knows Sample knows that he, more than most people, truly deserves happiness in life. And after meeting his new wife and seeing that seeing that she can put up with the Phi Psi guys (Pauli most of all), I know he's found that. Congratulations buddy - I hope the honeymoon is like the table your brother described in his speech.....

To get back to what I was saying, it was good to be see a lot of friends from college and see how they are doing before I leave. It was interesting to see how each of us have taken pretty different paths in the four years since graduation and to see where these paths have lead so far. We are spread out from Boston to Indianapolis. Most of the guys seem to be in pretty good relationships at this point (which makes me think that I may be missing a lot of weddings over the next two years). There are some of the guys that have been working since graduation, have put in their time doing the grunt work and are starting their ascent up the corporate ladder. There are others that either went straight to graduate school after graduation or went back to school after a few years of work and are looking forward to doing the grunt work. And then there are others (or maybe just me) that have put in four years of work and extra schooling and are in the process of trying to change paths completely. I guess that is the benefit of being in my generation, I'm not expected to stay in the same job or in the same career my entire life - its acceptable to jump around a little. I sure have - this will be my 5th move and 4th job in four years.

Well, I guess it is time to pack my bags and say my final goodbye's. My next entry will hopefully be from Kingston.