Lucky Guy!

Certainly in the category of personal posts.... :)

I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday, if you can call it that. Sat in the board room of one of our partner organisations with 7 others preparing for a project interview. Suddenly for a second I found myself having one of those reflective out-of-body moments where I stood back and listened to what was going on....

Exactly when did I become someone contributing to senior management meetings in a meaningful way? Here we were, chatting away and discussing strategy. Damn it, it's just not right. I used to have a proper reputation as a pain in the ass developer, where did that guy go? In truth he's still here, but what I realised is that many of the other people in the room I've known for a long long time, all my working life in fact in some cases. And the funniest thing was as each of those people spoke I found myself having the most profound feeling of "I can learn something here". And mostly that was from people who used to be as much of a pain in the ass as I was (am).

All this made me think it's pretty amazing to have stayed so close to one industry and maintain such close relationships with people throughout ones entire working life (to date anyway). I can only hope that my contributions to the group is equal to that of my peers. I'm sure part of the reason for this is Sheffield is closer to being a village than a city. All the same tho, to have maintained friendships and working relationships through the ups and downs of growing our professional lives, and the many and assorted businesses we work in, really is quite amazing and, to me at least, a fine example of what can be achieved with a bit of perspective, persistence and willingness to work at things.