Golf With Old Friends

I played my final round of golf for the year, most likely, yesterday with some old friends. We all worked in the same department at our present company over twenty years ago, on the lower rungs of the ladder in our respective fields. Today, one is a Vice President (with whom I actually had never been true "friends," but we have always been friendly, and played ball together for a few years), another a Director, another a Senior Database Engineer, and I, a Team Lead.

I'm the only one not still in Technology, and I sometimes wonder whether I should have stayed in that field. I didn't quite have the passion for technology that is required to excel, but I think now that I've seen how it affects other areas of our company, having worked in another area for 10 years now, I think I could. Problem is, 10 years of technological changes have passed me up.

I have also wondered whether I should have been more driven to put in 10+ hour days to try to climb the corporate ladder. My LSAT scores alone give me the confidence to believe I'd have enough smarts for it, but you need to put in the hours as well, even if partly for show. Not that my successful golf buddies are about show; they've truly earned it. But I've seen the show part work for others, to be sure.

Thing is, while I could envision myself finally, at age 45, go all out in investing in my career, I saw something on the golf course that makes me re-think that. During the round, all three others were checking their cell phones for work e-mails throughout the round, with the V.P. of course checking the most frequently, between literally every shot.

He is clearly a skilled golfer, which doesn't surprise me, as I remember the days we played softball together on the diminutive Duluth & Case fields in St. Paul in the late '80s (diminutive in that the fields overlapped to the point where outfielders in separate games would be facing each other....still hard to believe there was never a serious injury from that set-up). But his game was rusty, as it was only his fourth time out this year. I had been feeling sorry for myself for not having played as much golf as in past years, and that my handicap went up a whole stroke because of it, but I still got out for at least a dozen more rounds this year than he. And I wasn't checking my cell phone during any of them, either, other than to perhaps update Facebook to boast about being able to play golf.

Speaking of which, I posted the above photo on my Facebook wall. My caption read, "Missed my second career ace on the last round of the year, but tap-in birdies are always fun, and my back held up for 18!" Yes, my aching back made it, and more tellingly, didn't hurt the next day (today).

It's definitely a trade-off to succeed in the corporate world, something I learned quite early, and rejected for myself, but with a lot of second-guessing. I'm happy for my old friends' success and I hope to play more golf with them next year. I'm also happy that I know I'll be playing a lot more than they will, and that I'm OK with the trade-off.