Have been doing some thinking lately about what my career is likely to look like when it’s all said and done.
There are several way I can see it going, from continuing to do pretty much what we’re doing now, through building large apartment buildings all over the country.
The common denominator in all of the potential outcomes is that I’m going to have to keep chopping wood for the next 30 years or so. While I love what I do, that’s kind of a tall order, right? I mean, this stuff is hard and people tend to lose energy as they age.
All of that was going through my head last night while I watched San Antonio play the Clippers in the NBA Playoffs.
All through the game, my attention was locked on Tim Duncan, the Spurs’ 38 year-old center. I kept thinking about where I was the first time I saw him dominate an NBA playoff game: The West End, a bar I used to frequent on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the summer of 1999.
Let me repeat: Tim Duncan has been dominating his chosen profession, one which requires an enormous amount of physical skill, since I was a rising sophomore in college, 16 years ago.
The way he does it has obviously changed. He’s not as fast, can’t jump as high, etc. But he’s managed to continue to dominate by adding new moves, by picking his spots, and by learning to anticipate plays, rather than react to them.
So now I’m kind of picturing my own future through the same lens.