You know, when I really sit and think about where this past decade started, what it moved through and where it is now... Just. Wow.
And, so that we're clear, I'm taking a page out of Loki's Book and I'm not even going to try to make this about anything other than me. It is my blog, after all, and I can be as narcissistic as I want to be.
That's why y'all love me, right?
Also, y'all should probably know I'm writing this New Year's Eve night, at SweetPea's mom's house. I've been spending some quality time with my boyfriend, Captain Morgan. So I have no idea what I'm about to start saying.
Wee! Buckle in!
I started the decade living with my mom & stepfather after my marriage broke up. Me and two wee Monkeys sharing a bedroom. I wasn't even working at the time this was taken. Good times. Really.
In the next few months I would start my first ever Professional Job, get introduced to Google and Marlboro Mild 100's and an atmosphere where tattoos and (dare I say it?) piercings were considered exciting and cool. MonkeyDo started in daycare and spent an entire week screaming. No lie. That tiny little Monkey would just languish in her playpen screaming.
It still breaks my heart to think about, but I had to work.
By the end of the year I would be working at Earthlink and dating the last man I've ever dated. When I was sitting in the parking lot at Earthlink, waiting to go in and interview - way back when I didn't understand why people always seemed so surprised by me - a guy walked by with a bright green mohawk. I knew I was home.
Earthlink was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. I had just come out of a situation where I'd spent a lot of time losing who I was. I had become so far removed from the girl I had started out towards that I had no real concept of just how much I was a stranger in my own skin.
Earthlink gave me the opportunity, exposure and experience to find, stretch and test my wings. I rediscovered some lost loves, along with my sense of humor, my sense of self and the beginnings of a sense of what I was capable of accomplishing.
Of course it wasn't an overnight thing, and I've spent the majority of the decade on this road of discovery. There's no way I'm done yet. And I can go on and on about the things that have happened since my wee Monkey took those first steps, but I think there's a limit to the length of a blog post.
Really.
The past year has been a long, strange, hard, joyous ride. Obviously I don't put everything that happens here on this blog - not everything in my life is suitable for public consumption. There's been laughter and tears. Joy and pain. Not so different from any year, for anyone. In some ways it's been one of the hardest years we've been through. In other ways it's felt like we've handled most of it smoothly and with a minimum of significant hiccups.
There have been a lot of things that happened this year - small things, big things - that have been dragging us inexorably towards change. I can't see the full picture of what's to come, but I know that we are standing on the precipice of major change. Where it will take us I have no idea, but I do know that there will be a transformation this year, and that our life will look nothing like this in a year.
I'm scared.
I'm excited.
I've been thinking and thinking about resolutions. I've had a very hard time trying to pinpoint what I should try to work on, aim for, work towards. I have a vision of what I'd like my life to look like, but I still have to pick apart the pieces of how it fits together, and how it gets there.
I guess also I'm better at plans, to-do lists, agendas.
And, hell. I quit smoking. I joined a gym. And you can pry my diet Coke from my cold, dead hands.
Damnit.
PS: I'm taking the weekend off. I'll see you Monday! While I'm gone, tell me all about your New Year's celebrations....
2 comments:
It was supposed to be quite. I wasn't even going to leave my neighborhood. The neighbors threw a party which I planned to go to, then they asked me if their dogs could hang at my house, and I thought "why not, NYE with all the dogs, that sounds like fun." But then their dogs were fine in the basement, so I just hung at the party. Mind you, this is the neighbor whose mother is a former caterer and came to town and baked THREE cheesecakes because, well, why wouldn't she? Food for days, puff pastry thingies, you name it. Then the neighbor across the street, who is a Brit, started talking cocktails with me, and we started mixing, and it went downhill from there. The evening ended with the two of us out front with Loki, with the drunken brit clinging to my dog "you're the best dog in the whole world, yes you are, YES YOU ARE!!!!!!"
quiet.
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