Star Trek : The Experience is closing

Never saw me as a Trekkie ehh? Well I am not.. but long, long ago in a state far, far away (I know I couldn’t be mixing Star Trek and Star Wars but I couldn’t help it).. I was a youngin and right out of college. I worked for one of the companies that built the interior themeing for this attraction and I gave just about three years of my life to it in some fashion or another. If you go through the queue and look at the walls I (and my buddies) are all over them (the stickers with HMS051074 are my initials and birth date), and if you could get close enough to the bridge Okudagram I can still name just about everyone who worked on the project- we are all in the graphics in some form.

In some ways these were the best years of my life, and in many others they were the worst. I was passionate about what I did, I learned something new every day, I fought for what I thought was right, I worked, and worked, and worked, and when I didn’t work, I played, and played- Las Vegas being my playground.

This seems like a lifetime ago. I haven’t been back since. Part of me wants to see it one last time, part of me is glad that it will be gone. A last remnant of a time where I was someone else, and I didn’t always like that person. I am glad that I am who I am today, but I do miss the passion that I had back then, the ability to spend many sleepless nights focused on a task, and the feeling that I was making a difference on a day to day basis. I think I lack that passion, that drive today, and I don’t know how to rekindle it without loosing the balance between work and family in my life that I love so much.

I won’t go back.. but I wonder, I contemplate- I have some extra stickers- I have been saving them for 10 years in the same file as my birth certificate and life insurance policy- should I keep them as a souvenir, or should I burn them when The Experience finally comes to an end?