This Decade

I started out this decade as a freshman in college. I remember over the holiday break for 99/00 I heard from one of my friends (still one of my friends) that he wouldn't be returning to college in the spring because he barely made grades enough for a GPA to be calculated. For whatever reason i remember sitting on my bed in my room in Danville, Kentucky thinking that him not being back at school in the spring would change the whole dynamic of college life. How would we all move on?

I remember contemplating whether i should try alcohol or not. Did that make me a bad person? I remember becoming involved in in Phi Mu and how no one had really figured out that i had a serious intellectual side yet because i was always a goof ball.

I remember one of my friends breaking up with his girlfriend back at home because they just couldn't stop the change that college brings. I remember him crying in my lap in my dorm room and me reading him this really sappy children's book trying to cheer him up.

I remember falling in love for the first time with a Canadian. And how happy and scary it was being in that situation. I remember being happy and not happy all in the same breath. I remember spending my holidays with him and his family in Canada and living in his little tiny room for several weeks during the summer and trying to figure out how to ride the bus since I didn't have a car.

I remember the friends that i made, kept, and lost during the last decade of my life. There are so few that started this decade with me and are still in that same spot at the end of it.

I recall moving from college to Canada to work full time on a temporary work visa. Having no friends and struggling with my decision to try and be "religious" again but not really understanding how to do that. Saving up to move to New Zealand - moving there with no job, no home, no transportation - just the idea that we would go to NZ and live for a year. I remember spending those 8 months struggling with my faith - reaching out to friends from back home that i hadn't talked to in way too long because they were my only connection to who i once was.

Those years were transformative years. The first 5 years of this past decade morphed me into a completely different person. The beginnings of an adult.

The last five years were me again struggling to figure out who i wanted to be. Being single again after not being single for so long and falling into love with the wrong person - again. Learning how to be mad and stay mad - how to know when it's time to move on. That's what i spent the next 3 years learning with both friendships and love.

And the last year has been about second chances, and being who i am regardless of how anyone else feels about it. Coming into my own. Being a prude when that's how i really feel - saying what i think like i used to when i was 16 and you said something i didn't like about God.

Again - wondering about my faith and talking to God, and remembering how to pray. Opening up to my sister and falling in love for the last time.

And now...2010, engaged. Living in a house where the discussion "could we have a family here" played a role in the selection. Starting a new job, well past my master's degree and starting new challenges like trying to be a fitness instructor.

I never would have guessed I'd be here. But it feels like the best version of my self in a long time, maybe ever. And we're not done yet.

Strange how there is no "I" or "Me" in Change

Change is hard. That's a pretty basic statement, I think. But when you get down to the knitty gritty of it - its not that ALL change is hard. Sometimes, change is easy - like when the summer schedule at work is over and I get to sleep in an extra 45 minutes.

THAT kind of change is easy.

Some changes are so gradual that you barely notice them. You just wake up one day and realize somewhere along the line you started drinking 1% milk instead of 2%.

Other changes are annoying. Like trying to change your habits of not going to the gym and wanting to literally be on the couch watching all your favorite reality tv shows eating chips and salsa into going to the gym and catching your shows when you can and NOT eating chips and salsa hardly ever.

The change i'm experiencing now is a bit different from those. As i'm continously working to benchmark other programs for the work i do - i find myself drifting back to past employers and evaluating the situation there. Because it was easy there in a lot of ways, and while what i did was important and probably looked really good to most outsiders, i see now that compared to what i'm facing now in my role makes my last job seem like a county fair compared to disney world.

But as i go back to what i know, to review it and analyze it with a different perspective - with the question of "did how i do it back then have any relevance for how i could create it now?" And it seems like everytime i look to find the answer to that question, another piece if what i built has changed. I'm not saying its changed in a bad way or a good way. I don't know - I'm not there and I don't know how it works better or worse, etc.

It seems weird, but no matter how much we struggle to follow the idea of "working to live" - I often think its quite the opposite in my career area. It seems that you have to pour so much of yourself into your work that now when i go back and look at what used to be reflective of my work and my thoughts and my ideas - its no longer mine. And i have this non-sensical moment of wanting to proclaim (loudly and yet to no one in particular) "Wait!!! Stop un-doing the good i did!"

And then i realize that things change and I don't have any right to pass judgement on things i'm not involved in anymore. And i feel badly for even allowing myself for a moment to feel like someone out there wasn't capable of having a better idea than i had.

You know -programs change. Forms change, processes change - and ultimately it's often the people change that creates the other ripples of change. And honestly, I chose to change roles and the ripples of change that are causing me a little sadness today are basically ripples from a rock I threw.

So yes, change is hard. Change is frustrating. Change can make you feel erased and forgotten. But I keep reminding myself that with every change comes a chance. And that's the ledge i have to find.