Planning Associates

Even though I have not worked there in four years, I often reflect the almost five years I spent working for Planning Associates of Louisiana/Mass Mutual in New Orleans. I have worked a few places since, and still am unable to compare the connections that I made with people at my first long-time job, which took up my early twenties. I often reflect on the people that I knew there, and how there is this family-like connection still lingering, still missing them. None of them are there now--perhaps that is the reason old feelings linger, as if to haunt me from a life that was almost secret to the one I have now.

I stay in touch with a few of the women, who are the majority of what I consider "family" from there. We don't talk much--everyone is so busy. Debbie, my old boss, just had her second baby. Lynn, probably my most cherished (almost a tie with Isabel), I look forward to seeing soon at her daughter's wedding. And Isabel, whom I became closest with after Debbie and Lynn's departure, I miss so much and almost wish we were still working together in the "huddle room." I sometimes wish we were all still working there. When I think of that place, it reminds me of the titanic; a bustling entity of life and productivity almost shut out from the rest of the world .... now sunk to the bottom of an almost endless ocean, empty, dead, with only echoes of what used to be. I visualize what the place looks like now ... all new people .... all new personalities. I'm tempted to visit there, just to see reality.