Final Reflections on 2012

Those of you who know me well know that the last four and a half years or so have been a bit of a whirlwind. I got married. I schlepped through three major moves (and two minor ones). I’ve held four different jobs, one of which I was laid off from – the first time that’s ever happened to me. The husband and I faced complete financial disaster on at least three separate occasions that I can recall. We also lost both of our mothers, only a year and a half apart from one another.

It hasn’t been easy.

2012 looked promising from the start. We were living in Austin, a city we loved, and had made a lot of great friends. The husband was chasing his dream of starting his own video game company. Very early on in the year, I decided to quit the awful temp job I’d been working and throw my talents in on the video game company. We weren’t getting paid and everything was up in the air, but it was exciting to finally take a chance like that.

Unfortunately, it didn’t pay off. Turns out the guy in charge of our group was a charlatan and a liar who squandered every opportunity we might have had to take our company to the next level. Everything fell apart. When the dust finally settled, the husband and I were only months away from running out of money. After about a month or so, he landed his job in Dallas. So we packed up our things, said a bittersweet goodbye, and headed the three hours north to our future.

The good thing is that all this upheaval in my life has made me a more flexible person. Most people get set in their ways as they get older. I’ve learned to roll with the punches. That’s not to say that I wasn’t sad to leave Austin. There were tears. I still miss it all the time & hope that we can move back someday. For the most part, though, I took it in stride. This is a thing that happened, it was dealt with, and we moved on.

I decided to approach Dallas with an open mind. I knew it would be very different from anywhere else I’d lived. I didn’t want to go into it with the expectation that I’d hate it (as many told me that I would). And for the most part, it’s actually been really good here. We love our apartment, love our jobs, and have met a lot of cool people. I have no complaints about Dallas. In some ways, I think it’s been really good for us.

Maybe 2012, and my life in general, didn’t turn out the way I expected. I’m not even totally sure what’s going to happen from here. But I have to admit that I’m feeling pretty excited to see what the future holds. Will my writing go anywhere? Will we work our way out of debt? How will our budding friendships in this new city unfold? There are so many different ways that things can work out. Everyday life is a lot more adventurous than people give it credit for, I think.

So here’s to 2013, and all the possibilities it brings. May we always remember to enjoy life, even when times get tough.

A Resolution By Any Other Name . . .

It's a beautiful final day of 2011 in Austin, Texas, so I hope you'll indulge me a few ruminations before I get on to the business of listing what I hope to achieve in 2012. With my husband suffering what appears to be a rather nasty cold and fears that I will be soon to follow, I decided to take my best advantage of a lovely day such as this. After running a few errands and getting some breakfast, I grabbed a coffee and headed down to the river for a walk.

A lot of things went through my mind as I was out and about. In many ways, 2011 was a very difficult year. In many other ways, however, it was fantastic. It ended on a bit of a downer. December has been a hard month. My first Christmas without my mother, coupled with the return to yet another meaningless, pointless cubicle job, and capped with food poisoning for Christmas Day, left me in a bit of a funk.

As I spent some quality time with myself today, all I could think was: "So? What are you going to do about it?"

Recently I was reading Riane Eisler's The Power of Partnership. Frankly, I didn't get very far. Part of me liked it. Part of me found her a bit histrionic (her rant about video games making people violent had me rolling my eyes). When the return date came up and I wasn't done, I returned it without renewing it. However, I did really enjoy the first chapter of the book, about how important one's partnership with one's self is. I'd never really thought of it that way before. It made me realize how much work I still have left to do.

All that having been said, I came up with four goals for 2012. I don't really like to call them resolutions. Goal seems to be a better word. I don't necessarily expect to achieve all of these goals - after all, I didn't achieve all the ones I had for 2011 - but I think that it will be fun to try. What can be better than trying to live up to one's full potential?

So here they are, my Goals for 2012:

1. Keep up with my writing. Specifically, I'd like to start working a lot harder so I can finish my current story more quickly. I've got a lot of ideas kicking around in my head. It's time to start putting them to paper. Also, I have an idea for my blog that should have me writing on it once a week - consider this the promise of a nice surprise starting next week!

2. Start thinking more seriously about a non-profit I'd like to start. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. I'm just still not exactly sure what I want to focus on. Have to have an idea before I can start working on it!

3. Be more mindful in my relationship with my husband. I want to have more intent in my interactions with him, to be more conscious of what I'm thinking and feeling when we're talking with one another. I don't think I'm explaining this one very well, but I know what I mean. I want to be more present in our relationship.

4. Be a better partner to myself. Specifically, I want to alter my eating habits (something I've already started), get more exercise/spend more time outside, and remember that liking myself is more important than anyone else liking me.

I think that I'm finally starting to become the person I've always wanted to be. It's been a long road, but I realized today that most of it has been incredibly fun. I enjoy being alive, even in the bad times. Life is too short to be unhappy.

I'm really looking forward to 2012. Let's see what kind of wild ride we get this time, shall we?

The Last Post of 2008 - Sorry It's a Downer

2008 was kind of a rough year for me. In Nov. 2007, while on a course of antibiotics for a UTI, I contracted a serious bacterial infection of the intestines. It took me a full six months to rid myself of this infection. I was on antibiotics for almost the whole six months, and had to follow an extremely restrictive diet. It was miserable.  I lost a lot of weight and felt terrible all of the time.

Fortunately, I got better right as my now-husband and I were planning to go on vacation. Initially, we had intended to go to Mexico, but after my illness, I didn't want to take any chances with possibly poorly prepared food. So we decided to go to Hawaii instead. My husband chose Maui because we'd never been here (I had never been to Hawaii at all). While researching things for the trip, he discovered the job that he would eventually get that would lead us to move to Maui.

We became engaged on our vacation. But what should have been a happy occasion for me really wasn't. We spent most of our vacation exploring the island in a "do we want to live here" way, in case he got the job. It wasn't very fun. Honestly, I never felt very impressed with Maui. I knew I didn't want to live here, and I hoped that he wouldn't get the job. Obviously, I hoped in vain. I cried when I found out we were moving here. A lot.

We were originally planning a small, simple wedding for the Fall. We opted instead to get married in a "quickie" ceremony before we moved here. And then we were off. I said goodbye to the best friends I had ever made, to the place where I had worked for 8 years, to the city I had lived in and loved for 10 years. Everyone was happy for me, many of them jealous, but I dreaded the move to Hawaii.

It's hard for me to tell if I'm not giving Maui a chance or if it just isn't the place for me. I feel so out of place here. I would like to love Maui the way so many people do; it would make life so much easier. I'd be so much happier. I've essentially been miserable the whole time I've been here. I feel like a superhero who has been removed from her source of power.

At the end of the day, the only reason I'm here is because I couldn't deny my husband the chance to take the best opportunity that had come his way in a long time. I would expect him to do the same thing for me.

One of the most frustrating things about being both very self-aware and socially conscious is understanding - on an intellectual level - that my problems are minimal in comparison to the problems of many others. But I think that what amounts to existential angst is a very painful thing to experience. I feel crippled by the inability to truly enjoy things. I'm also aware that it's my own fault. It is my own choices and actions (or lack thereof) that have led me to this impasse.

I'm not yet sure what 2009 is going to bring. I would like to take this negative feeling I've had all year and turn it into something more positive. There's this line in the Jethro Tull song "Inside" that I love. It goes: "And I won't worry about a thing because we've got it made. Here on the inside, outside's so far away."

I'd like for that to become true for me in 2009.