I think it was 10 years ago this week that I decided to quit my job at ARAMARK in Burbank. It was the beginning of the end of my brief but somewhat meteoric career as a business systems analyst and database programmer. I went on, the following year, to work at HealthSmart Pacific in Long Beach and Newport Beach, but from that December of 2004 I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be satisfied with doing computer work, at least in that vein, indefinitely. Perhaps not coincidentally, that same December was the month when I very intentionally ended my reliance on prescription psychoactives (as treatment for my run-in with dysphoric insanity 6 years earlier).
I was reflecting that my in-Korea teaching career is now extending to nearly the same length as that more conventional career did. It doesn't feel like a career in the same sense, at all. It is in some ways more fulfilling – I get a lot out of the kids, even the desultory post-exam teens like I had this morning.
I had some idea that writing this "anniversary" post would be somehow cathartic or meaningful, but I think I'm just filling blogspace because I have my rule to post something each day.
The other night, I dreamed I was speaking Korean, almost fluently. There was one major problem with this fantastic scenario: I had no idea what I was saying.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]