Going Places

Today (it's mid-November), I talked to a group of smart, eager kids in my niece Cassie's journalism class at Wayne Hills High School in New Jersey. It reminded me how random words or acts can change your life. When I was in high school back in the 1960s, my guidance counselor gave me a choice of three things I could be: a teacher, a nurse or a secretary. None appealed to me. Under pressure to say something, I remembered seeing women's names in newspaper bylines, and I blurted out, "I want to be a journalist." At journalism school, I was a broadcasting major and never took a business class (no one except biz majors cared much about business in the early '70s). And now, for more than 20 years, so much of my life has revolved around business.

So many of us end up in places we didn't intend to. And that's not a bad thing. This is a convenient (and traditional) time of year to examine our actions and figure out what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we need to change. All too frequently, however, we forget our epiphanies shortly after we have them, and another "same old, same old" year starts whizzing by. So let's at least try to remember our resolutions through Leap Day.