Time is inevitable. It is neither for you nor against you. It just is.
A dear friend of mine introduced me to author William Goldman, who in his beautiful and poignant novel Soldier in the Rain said this about saying goodbye: “Until that time.”
Well, that time is here. Farewell my MPI friends and family.
I have been sharing news about MPI and our members for nearly eight years—2,867 days, to be exact. Hundreds of thousands of words.
I leave with mixed emotions. I leave behind a great team of professionals at MPI, a committed team that is passionate about serving members. But a new opportunity awaits.
In time, my absence will neither be noticed nor missed because it has always been about the story and never the storyteller. The stories will go on. It is just someone else’s turn to tell those stories.
Life knocks us all down, but meeting pros get up and move on. There’s no shame in getting knocked down. The shame is in staying down.
It’s has been a joyous and wonderful and beautiful ride. Not once, truly not even once, did I ever dread going to work. Well, maybe just a few times. But this job, after all, was never really work. It had two things I have always loved—meeting people and writing.
The memories are crystal clear of those first days, from my first WEC in Minneapolis to my last issue of The Meeting Professional and many, many adventures around the world along the way.
It would be so gratifying to name all people kind enough to share their stories with me over the last eight years. That, of course, is impossible.
Talking with MPI members never got old. I chronicled how meeting professionals worked hard and played hard, how sometimes they cried and how they always laughed and smiled. Life knocks us all down, but meeting pros get up and move on. There’s no shame in getting knocked down. The shame is in staying down.
In the end, I just want to say thank you. Feeble though those words are, thank you to all the members, the readers and my co-workers over the years, especially my partners on the Media team, Blair Potter and Michael Pinchera.
I never thought saying a simple farewell would be so difficult. It is at a moment like this when two of life’s great emotions kiss: joy and sadness. There is overwhelming joy that I got to do this for the last eight years. There is overwhelming sadness that I won’t be doing it anymore for MPI.
Time meanders on and time brings an end to most things. And so, that time is here.
Until that time we meet again…
Rich Luna
Editor in Chief
rluna@mpiweb.org
