I am terrible at developing and maintaining relationships and friendships.
It’s one of my life’s biggest regrets. I’m so ashamed at my own sinfulness when I think of past relationships that ended poorly, I failed to cultivate, or I simply was too ignorant or selfish to begin. I truly wish that things had turned out differently.
Back when I graduated from college, I selfishly and naively thought that every job other than a well-paying engineering job was below me.
It took four painful, humbling, but growing years in the middle of a deep recession to shatter this self-centered paradigm and see every experience as an important part of my development as a person. In his book, Quitter, author Jon Acuff refers to such experiences as parallels: opportunities to ask “how can this job/experience impact my dream?“
The past month has brought back a lot of references to the “Greatest Generation”. Not only did George H.W. Bush, former President and the youngest naval fighter pilot to serve pass away at age 94, but last Friday, December 7 marked the anniversary of the “date which will live in infamy”. It was the event in our history, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which sent many from the “Greatest Generation” to serve and defend our county on two fronts. One of these was my late grandfather, who served in the Army and was wounded in Okinawa.
I’ve formally been rooted in medtech for well over 10 years. As a high school junior, I declared biomedical engineering as my major of choice on my college application, and I never changed it. I’m blessed that I work for a medical device company and write about medical technology on the side. I’ve had the opportunity to speak about the life-changing potential of medical technology and visit numerous countries to see what they’re developing.
This is yet another re-do of what I hope will become a more consistent effort at blogging. Although writing is primarily what I do as a side hustle, I’ve been horrible at expressing my own thoughts in written form, in a central place, for a long while. So to kick off the start of another iteration of my blog, I thought I’d share about the end, the culmination of what I hope and pray my career in the medical technology industry will look like.