And it's business as usual for me - I'm working during the daytime, and then going to an OCA-Orange County board meeting tonight.  I thought about taking the day off today (and if I lived in Canada, I would have my birthday off EVERY year :)), but then I realized, what's the point?  I would just sleep in late, watch a matinee movie by myself, and putter around the house since everyone else was working :P.

That said, I'm sleep deprived today because I didn't sleep well last night. Mihály Csíkszentmihály, the researcher who coined the idea of "flow" in psychology, argued that the most productive/stimulated people changed their career approximately every ten years to stay sharp and avoid plateauing on their learning curve or getting stuck in a rut. Me, I've always known that since high school, I've moved approximately every 4 years (college in Boston, then medical school in Baltimore, then residency in Chicago, then a 1 year fellowship in Boston, then for work in Los Angeles) and essentially restarted my life each time, and that that sort of thing kept things fresh for me - new city, all new cast of characters, and a chance to be...different? better?

So...at the 4-5 year mark in Los Angeles, I was kind of surprised that I didn't really feel a need to move.  I chalked it up to the size and diversity of the city, that even after five years (and now, after nine) that there's still plenty of nooks and crannies that I still haven't explored of this metropolitan area.  But in retrospect,  my life did change at that time.  In 2004, I bought a house, rebooted OCA-Orange County from scratch, and most significantly I started taking improv and acting classes at that point.  So while my "world" hadn't changed geographically, it changed significantly in terms of what I was doing.  Work was the same, but I stopped going to most of the mixers and functions that I used to go to (as an indication of this, I was at someone else's birthday party a couple of weekends ago, and someone asked me if I was still single.  "Yes, why do you ask?" "Because we haven't seen you in a long time!"), because I was now spending much more time studying the arts and performing, and unlocking another side of myself that had only existed before in a rudimentary fashion. 

Well, now it's 2008, and I'm hitting the four year mark again.  As you know, I'm co-chairing the NAAAP National Convention in Los Angeles (www.naaapconvention.org) - and internally, I know that this is my "swan song" when it comes to Asian American organizations - kind of a last, parting gift to the organizations that have nurtured me and that I nurtured in return.  I'll still be involved, but certainly not to the same degree. I feel the gears of my life grinding, getting ready to shift again.  I don't know the full details...but somehow, I know that same time next year, my life is going to be very different.  If life is a series of books, then...I don't actually know the ending, but I can see from the page count that the end of this particular book is coming up, before the next book in the series begins.

"Things are going to change, I can feel it."