I’m not big on anniversaries, but something about today’s date prompted me to notice an interesting fact. Interesting for me, that is. Today is the last day of my first twenty years in the employ of the European Parliament.

A cake. An excellent one.

I guess that in this day and age, where eager professionals are supposed to hop seamlessly from job to job with their transferrable skill-sets and burgeoning CVs, this simple fact actually counts as something remarkable. Some would say quite sad, and even I don’t know whether to wish the same for the brght-eyed young colleagues who surround me here. But whatever one thinks about it, it remains worthy of at least passing comment.

It sometimes seems almost a contradiction in terms that a crusty old EU official like me should be in the digital communications game. Surely this is something for sub-30 hipsters who absorbed computers with their mother’s milk and who, at the latest, started using the internet as teenagers? For sure, when I look at my colleagues I realise that there is a difference between the “digital natives” and my generation. I have to remind myself that what for me is acquired, and in some senses provisional, is for them completely normal, just “how it is”. Think “Nadina”, as we say here. I sometimes wonder when I will hit my tech-tolerance horizon (I’m convinced it exists), when some new thing will come up and I will honestly feel I really can’t be bothered with it, that it can be some-one else’s problem.  Even now, I am aware of just being slightly behind the curve, letting others try out, say, Foursquare, and waiting for them to tell me: (i) if I should give it a go or (ii) whether this is somewhere the Parliament should be. (Yep, I’m rapidly coming round to the idea that the answer is yes in both cases.)

Still it is possible for our little subculture to exist and possible that our authorities place value on what we do.

But the main reflection today isn’t about my age, relative seniority or status as not-quite-past-it-yet digital immigrant, it’s more on my incredible good fortune still to be able, after twenty years with the same employer, to land in a job which opens up something completely new to me, to work with fresh, motivated people and actually to be involved in something creative and innovative. No job is wall-to-wall fun, for sure, not everything in this house is perfect and, yes, I am aware that our local environment here may not be representative of everyone’s life in a European Institution, but still it is possible for our little subculture to exist and possible that our authorities place value on what we do.

For that, on this twentieth anniversary, I am grateful to my employer, and still more grateful to those creative, motivated people around me who make it happen.

And for the cake this morning too…