2³×7

What would Piaget do? What would Ericson say? What would Jung make of it?

Developmentally, you hear a lot about seven-year phases of growth. You have an identity by age 7, you're into adolescence by 14, adulthood at 21, etc.

I've heard athletes and coaches say that it takes seven years of training to become a (fill in blank: runner, swimmer, cyclist). If you extrapolate that principle, it takes seven years of training to become a dancer, guitarist, painter, programmer, or - editor?.

I suspect it has something to do with the rate at which cells die off and replace themselves with new cells. As people age, they grow a new nervous sytem, organ systems, muscles and bones, and everyday practice trains it in a set of habits. Therefore the person that's been practicing activity A for seven years is, in a way, a new body, a runner/painter/editor's body.

As of four weeks ago, I have been working at Large Publishing Co. for - you guessed it - seven years, so, according to the neo-Piagetian logic abaove, I guess I'm an editor now. I am also passing a marker for a multiple of seven in age, so gee whiz, something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones.

I've had rumblings of impending change, but there's nothing new about that. Let's see, I've already used up my allotment of "midlife" crises, endured something akin to empty-nest syndrome, and undergone enough career changes for several lifetimes. I've been spared the worst of traumatizing losses. I've entertained other, imaginary, life-changing events but, so far, confined them to the realm of fiction and speculation.

I've been lucky. More luck than sense, my friend Dr. Smith used to say. Not always smart. I've dodged a few bullets and made a few decisions that didn't work out so well. That would be another story. For the present, I'd have to say that things are going well, but not so well I could afford to relax or lose my focus.

In fact, I expect another major challenge just around the bend. I'm not going to tempt fate by naming it right now, and I'm not even sure what form it will take, but there are enough potential problems - personal, professional, financial - staring me in the face that any one of them could become a crisis at any time. Just to add a little tension to the story.

But that's the thing with a milestone with no clearly legible label: you know you're turning a corner, but you don't know which one or what street it is. At this point, I wouldn't expect any radical changes, and most of the major choices have already been made, so radical changes are not really an option. Maybe that's the anticlimactic corner I'm turning.