See what I did there?

I've been pondering this past weekend what a year has brought.

Not just the thrombosed hemorrhoid in the White House - my own life has seen quite an upheaval in the past 365 days.


A year ago, I had just lost a job in the healthcare industry. As I remarked at the time, I wasn't that upset - I suddenly saw no future in the business.

But it put me at a crossroads. Thirty years I spent driving a desk in a cube farm. I met my wife in the healthcare business - we worked 3 desks apart during our courtship years.

You know I bided my time. There was a difference this time around. It wasn't the great recession, so I had the resources to survive a while without taking the first thing that came down the pike.

I happened to be in Boston one day for an interview, when I picked up a copy of the Metro News, a free newspaper distributed throughout the subway. Buried in the back, I saw a small ad about becoming a trolley tour driver.

I don't even know why I applied. At the time, it was more on a whim than anything else. I like to drive, like history, and of course telling everyone how great Boston is usually isn't an issue with me.

But, nevertheless...a year later, here I am driving a 40-foot Freightliner Trolley Replica bus through the streets of Boston.

Looking back now, I have been musing over the change. I spent 30 years in the insurance industry. There were many ups and downs over those decades. But the past ten years or so have been marked by mostly down times. I can say the last time I was really happy behind a desk was over a decade ago now back at ol' athenahealth.

My last year at Fallon was unfulfilling and unsatisfying, and ended in chaos as my mother went into her endgame and passed from this earth. But the last few days and weeks driving have been a pleasure. I was thinking today - I can't remember the last time I had a bad day out driving in the city. Conversely, I can't remember the last truly good day I had behind a desk. It has been night and day.

I reached the conclusion about a week ago now, as I approached this anniversary.

My whole life, I've worked because I HAD to - fighting for survival, keeping a roof overhead, keeping my wife and child fed and medicated. As such, I bounded around a lot of jobs, taking things that were less than satisfying because I needed the work RIGHT NOW.

Driving in Boston - I took that job because I WANTED to. I think that makes all the difference in the world.

I just looked it up. We all know the quote, but it turns out it's older than we think.






See you on the tour!