Cause For Celebration

This weekend, former One Life to Live coworkers of mine won a Writer's Guild Award for their work on General Hospital. I am reminded that the world that died in New York lives on in other places. Just this past week Days of Our Lives was renewed on NBC. People I know are still doing soap work, and a genre pronounced dead here is still very much alive elsewhere.
 
It makes me wonder a bit where I would be now, had the soaps not ended in NY. Would I still be there, alternating days between control room work and edit room work? Would I have advanced, or would my job have stayed basically the same? Would I have had time to do anything new in my home life, and would I have learned the new things about editing that I have working in news? Would I have met new people, or would my network stop at the soap studio doors?
 
We will likely always live with "what if's," whether the changes we face are our choice or someone else's. Life, of course, would be different if I still lived in the soap world. It might be calmer. It might be more secure or more predictable. But it also might not have expanded my circle or my family role or my skill set or my confidence.
 
So, as I celebrate my colleagues' honor, I also celebrate the changes of the last few years. It has not always been easy, but we are still standing, and doing, and learning. And sometimes, that is also a worthy cause for celebration.