Last September I posted Midway, revisited, a rather depressed take on the preceding 12 months in which I wrote:

Has it been a good year?  No.  It has been a tough year; the first year of my second half (if so it will become) did not go as planned.  My family are great, Aperio is doing great, all the "big important things" are great, but my head is not.

It does not feel, in retrospect, like the Midway was in any sense an inflection point.  I didn't do anything differently, and nothing happened differently as a result.  I am still midway to figuring it all out.  It is ironic that the Midway has a banner saying "Welcome Home"; of course it is intended for seaman returning from war in the middle east, but for me it has another meaning; do I really live "midway"?  Perhaps I do.

Revisiting the Midway gives me an opportunity to rededicate myself to changing.  I strongly hope that when I ride by it again next year, I'll feel that this year was really a turning point.

And so what has happened since?

Everything.

My family are still great, Aperio is still doing great, all the "big important things" are still great.  But in the past 6 months my head has changed a lot.

Maybe it was the realization that I wanted to change that did it.  I gave myself permission. 

If you didn't know me then and met me, and met me again right now, you probably wouldn't see the difference.  But if you read my blog then and read it now, I believe you'll see it.  I just checked all posts in September 2009, and compared them to all posts in April 2010, and they just feel different.  Can you tell?

Anyway it has been quite a period of change, good change, and I am confident that when I ride by the Midway at this years' Pathology Visions conference (and I definitely plan to do so!) I will *not* conclude that I am still midway to figuring it all out.

I am probably midway to somewhere else, but I definitely took off from where I was last fall :)  Onward!