Five Years and Counting

Five years ago today I walked into the Accenture office at 180 N. LaSalle in downtown Chicago with wide eyes and a nervous excitement about what was about to begin: my first full-time job after college. I sat down in a room filled with about 20 other recent college graduates to begin learning about health insurance, retirement, and company culture. They taught us about the “consultant lifestyle”, handed us our own laptops, and started us on a whirlwind course about how to program an online shopping cart system. It was just 3 weeks before our country would be rocked by the events of September 11th, 2001.
Now, 5 years later, I sit in my desk at our client, the Arizona Department of Revenue, designing a computer based financial system that will account for upwards of one billion dollars a month in tax revenue, leading a team of programmers and meeting with our client daily to discuss how we will get our computer system to automatically reconcile with the state accounting system. I have two computers and three screens on my desk flashing things that need my attention, and my cup of tea next to a bowl of dark chocolate candy to help me through.
Also during this time, I’ve purchased 4 cars, lived in 3 houses, moved across the country, restored a classic car, survived a flooded house, and twice remodeled the same house. I am married with a 6 year old, founder and chairman of a non-profit corporation, and elite status on US Airways and United Airlines. Thanks to my best friend John, I have sipped coffee in a Parisian cafe, camped and sea kayaked in Alaska, savored a nine course meal in San Francisco, dined on amazing steak in Portland, hit the slopes in Colorado, smelled the ocean in Seattle, driven from Colorado to North Caroline in a Ryder truck, and felt the sand between my toes on the beach in Mexico.
Hm. It’s amazing what five years can do.