2003.07.24

Hiatus

Comments

It’s been a bit of a grind for the past two weeks, everyone. Sorry for being gone! In between dealing with fires at work and assembling and designing an electronic book for my 10-year high school reunion, I pretty much lost my ability to form coherent thoughts on other topics. I also drained my body’s ability to fight off illness, and somehow managed to catch a cold in July! The worst part was that, laid up for two days at home, I couldn’t take any time to recover; Saturday was impending and the book wasn’t going to finish itself. Sigh.

Don’t even get me started on the CD project. I get a headache just thinking about that.

I think I end up volunteering for projects because of very wrong, very selfish reasons. For example, I took on this one not out of the goodness of my heart, but because I just didn’t trust anyone else not to screw it up. What this really meant was that though I finished on time, with what I considered to be a successful product, I didn’t get much personal satisfaction out of it beyond the adrenaline rush of just barely meeting deadline. Instead, I got to Chicago sleep-deprived and still ill, hardly how I envisioned myself meeting and reconnecting with long-lost classmates.

Still, it was an elegant and hugely successful event — my first time ever in the Sears Tower. On the 99th floor, from atop the world, the 360 degree view of Chicago is simply breathtaking. Jill once told me that the women would all look the same, albeit more elegant, and the men would be almost unrecognizable (all filled out, adults at last) and she was right, definitely. Mostly, the biggest difference was in dress — lots of chic, tailored suits and fabulous cocktail dresses — a far cry from where we all were ten years ago. But the huge surprise was how easy it was to connect and reconnect: with those I knew, an easy familiarity, as if we’d never parted; and with those I didn’t, a newfound comfort, perhaps from the shared experiences of growing up beyond high school. As the night grew late, I was barely aware of what a wreck I’d been coming in, and I began to dread the thought that it all would end. It did, though, as it had to, many long embraces and promises of correspondence later.

One advantage of making the book: I had so engrossed myself in the doings and goings of my classmates in the days before the reunion, that I had a huge head start on everyone else. As to what the future holds for each of us, I guess we’ll all have to wait for the big 2-0 to find out.


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