20 Years

The year 2011 is the 20th since I graduated from college (undergraduate); 13 years have passed since I finished graduate school.

This evening I was compiling a list of all the clients I've worked with over the years on various consulting assignments, and I came up with a list of 38 names (there were a few more, but I counted only the ones for whom I did a substantial amount of work).

I did the math on the number of employers I've had as well, and my present company makes a baker's dozen -- thus, I've topped the American average of 7-10 job changes in a career. This frequent change of jobs was not by design, mind you: in my first professional job after college, I had notions of retiring there; that idea lasted only six months until my first of three layoffs (I beat out another layoff by hitting the exit before the curtain dropped).

Sounds awful, doesn't it? Yet my former manager (who quit just last week) said that I always over-delivered on my work, and that I was a dependable person in a business not known for dependable people. Go figure.

About the only thing I'm confident of regarding my employment is that I don't expect to retire doing what I do today. We'll see how it goes.