2009 In Review - Cut because this is a doozy.
It's been a while since I updated here, a fact I'm sorry for. Facebook and Twitter have really become the places where I keep track of people, but this place is more for me than anything else. I'm going back and reading my entries for the year as I write this, and it's really nice to be reminded where I was, and how far I've come. I also like doing these year-in-review thingies. When I'm done with this, I might even go back and see how many I have and do a decade in review. Exciting, eh? And no, I don't want to hear about the decade ending in 2010. Really.
2009 can be split somewhat neatly into three sections: the deciding where to go to law school part, the writing part, and the attending law school part. I found out in January that I'd gotten into William Mitchell and Hamline, but didn't learn I was accepted to the U until slightly later. I want to say it was late January to early February. Once I'd been accepted to the U I was fairly sure that was where I would go, but I had some time where I wavered back and forth, especially given the differences in scholarships between the U and the other two schools.
Becky and I called the last day of February Super Friday because we got our bonuses that day (somewhat unexpected given the economy, but very welcome) and we went to see Jonathan Coulton. That was the concert where Bill Corbet, Kevin Murphey and Neil Gaiman showed up, and was absolutely amazing. Also amazing was the fact that my bonus check was large enough to completely pay off my credit card, which has maintained a zero balance ever since then and will until I'm responsible enough to remember to pay it off promptly at the end of the month.
I got a couple of fun gadgets in March too. I bought an AlphaSmart and my dad gave me a Kindle for my 26th birthday. I love both of them and used them heavily through the first half of the year, though I haven't used the former since starting school (it's really a writing tool and I just haven't written while I'm in school) and the latter only a handful of times. It makes me a bit melancholy reading about how focused my life was on reading and writing, both hobbies that I've had to let drop in the last three months.
Writing was omni-present in the first three quarters of the year. After finishing NaNo in 2008 I made a goal to actually finish the novel I'd started for NaNo 2006 and picked up again for NaNo 2008. I was writing fairly steadily through the first months of the year, and on April 6th finished a 136,899 word first draft. I jumped right into editing, which was a whole new thing for me. It's amazing in hindsight how much my writing ability improved through the five months I spent editing that thing. I got a lot of tips from blogs written by authors and people in the publishing industry, but a lot of it was just trial and error.
It's amazing to me how much leisure time I had before starting classes. I remember (and miss) the fairly sizable time I spent writing and reading, but I was also playing some WoW, going out with friends (particularly to the weekly pub quiz at Merlin's Rest) and spent several weeks watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD, something I enjoyed a lot in the beginning but eventually became so frustrated with that I put it down early in the last season and never went back to it. I was also walking a lot then - part of the way home from work 3-4 days a week, then in the summer I started jogging as well.
It's a bit sad reading my excitement in late April over gay-marriage being legalized in Iowa. There was a real hope for a while that there had been a turning of the tide, but that kind of petered out. One of the few disappointments I've had with President Obama has been his lack of support for gay rights. I understood even before he was elected that he's a more moderate politician than anyone gave him credit for, but I think I'd hoped that gay rights might be one area, somewhat safer than abortion, where he could really reach out to the liberal base.
Although I was very engaged in politics early in the year, as my focus turned to getting the novel done before law school I really dropped out of that. It was very frustrating as well to see the stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise (and straight out disrespect) coming from Washington. It's been a disappointment to me that the Republican party has clung to the religious social conservatives. I suppose I didn't expect there to be much compromise in government, but as someone who believes in healthy debate, it's frustrating to see people acting like idiots and refusing to even try to meet in a middle ground.
In early May I got my second tattoo. Now that I've had it for a few months I can say that I'm definitely happy with it. It's much more visible than the one on my lower back, and although I've had to explain it a few times, the act of doing that has made me more and more happy with it. Something I maybe didn't anticipate about law school is how focused on language it is, the power of words, the importance of saying things as accurately as possible. It's funny because of the stereotype of legalese, but it's also true.
I haven't written much about work because, although I spent eight hours a day there and another couple in transit, it really didn't stay with me much. I was working on a system redesign with our IT department, which was actually a very enjoyable project that did a lot for my confidence. I think it was the first time I felt that my input was actually sought out and appreciated. Other than that I think I was just killing time. I learned in April that I would be getting money from the U and sent in my deposit that month. My performance review was the first day of June. I'd gone back and forth on when to tell my boss I was leaving, but the review ended up being the perfect time to do it. I suspect that my boss knew I wasn't satisfied with my job, and he was very supportive of my decision to go back to school.
In June I attended the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention. This was both very rewarding and very difficult for me. I wrote about it here quite a bit. I wrote on twitter that maybe my self-esteem issues have kept me from realizing that I'm shy. This still strikes me as true. I think I used to think that the reason I had a hard time getting to know new people was because of lack of confidence, but with the convention, which happened at a time in my life where I was actually fairly happy with myself and my life, I still had a terrible time getting to know people, and didn't really feel comfortable talking to people until the very last day.
The worst day was probably the second of the three days, where I missed my bus because of a panel going late and would have had an hour wait when I was very tired. I became paralyzed over the thought to trying to get a ride home or waiting around talking to people and ended up breaking down in tears and (once I'd calmed down) taking a taxi home. In hindsight, it was all about when to push myself and when to just let things be. I have to push myself earlier in the experience of meeting new people, not towards the end when I'm exhausted. That level of anxiety is draining on every level. It was a good weekend for me realizing these things, but when it was done I felt like I'd run a marathon. It was such a relief to be back at pub quiz on Sunday night. I felt like myself again. Back in my comfort zone.
July more or less flew by. I had to go back to the beginning on editing again, but each time I did that it got better. I can't say exactly how many drafts I went through, as some sections got edited more often than others. The first couple of months of editing were spent doing fairly heavy rewrites, which is why I call the draft I finished in April the rough draft, and then I was mostly working on the middle and end bits. Sometimes I'd make a change that required starting over, but the first few chapters were fairly set after the first rewrite. Ben was an amazing help during all of this, reading multiple versions offering encouragement and brainstorming when I got really stuck. I owe him a lot for that. Writing is very isolating, and I don't think I could have done it without some regular feedback.
Because I was writing a fair bit about writing, especially in August when I was doing nothing BUT editing, I started getting requests to read the novel when it was done. It's both amusing and a bit sad to see how concerned I got about this. As it turned out, I sent copies to 15 or so people, and only ever got feedback from two of them (and that was pretty sparse). I've been struggling with this a bit recently, actually. I'd initially planned to spend this winter break really focused on rewriting, but that sort of relied on getting enough feedback to have an idea of what to do.
The self-doubt starts creeping in there too - maybe they started reading it and hated it but don't want to hurt my feelings. I think it's probably more that even with the edits it was more than 100,000 words, which is a lot to read, even in four months, and also I haven't exactly followed up with people on it. I realize too that I probably wouldn't have been able to do a good rewrite this break anyhow - leaving aside the fact that I'm going to Texas for a week to volunteer, my head just isn't in the right place. I needed the last week to really vegetate and recover from exams. Not only would I probably need more than a month for a good rewrite, I'd need time to actually meet with the people who managed to read the whole thing to discuss feedback, and that would have taken a lot of time too.
Well, maybe next summer. I really do intend on getting a draft of that novel to a state where I feel comfortable sending it to publishers, even if it takes a few years to get there. In the mean time I've been very slowly plotting out a new novel. In the past I've written mostly through NaNo - just sit down and type until the fingers fall off. LitG was the first novel I actually rewrote, in a way making it my first novel, and even that I didn't really plot out until after the rough draft was done. I realized that when I'm composing, I want to be writing nearly every day, and I just don't have the time for that right now. However outlining is something I can do, and I think it will be interesting to see how a novel turns out that's been planned out in advance.
August was a blur of editing several hours every day, working up to being able to jog a mile without switching to walking, and panicking about money. I set a goal to finish editing a chapter every other day and right at the end of the month had finished my first draft and went into a week of editing several chapters a day looking for specific technical issues. And then suddenly it was time for orientation at the U, the edits were done, the drafts were sent off, and that was it.
It's hard to write about the last four months. Law school has been completely different from anything I've done before. It's been amazing and difficult and terrifying all at once. It's been very, very hard work, but at the same time, everything has seemed to come so naturally that I've been frightened. I became one of the smart kids, and haven't quite figured out how to deal with that. In grade school I sort of took it for granted that I was smarter than most everyone around me, but because I generally took my head down, I didn't tend to get a lot of recognition (or if I did, I didn't notice it). In undergrad I felt like I blended into the crowd of smart people. Sometimes I even felt like I was one of the less smart ones, especially compared to my friends in computer science and the trivia crowd.
As much as I've spent much of the semester fighting against it, though, I have to accept that I did do very well in my classes and earned a fair bit of respect from some of my classmates as well. The frightening thing now is waiting to see if my grades reflect that. The last month of classes I found to be very melancholy, as I mentioned to one of my professors on one of the last days of classes. It feels like no matter how my grades are, that will color my next semester. If I do very well I'll want to maintain that, and if I don't do as well as I hoped then I may be more self-conscious about speaking in class, not to mention stressed about finding work.
The social aspect of school was maybe the most difficult, though never quite as hard as I expected it to be. It was more of a low level, ongoing strain of having to be “on” for such long periods of time. I worked a job where I didn't interact with other people much, and was especially self-conscious about how often I was speaking in class. I remember telling myself a few times that I wouldn't raise my hand as much, but then we'd be discussing something really interesting, or the professor would ask a question I knew the answer to, and I just couldn't help myself.
Another difficult thing with socializing is knowing that I needed to edit myself more than I ever had before, especially in regards to my religion. It's been another fallow year for me spiritually. I have this sense that my religion has been in hibernation for several years now - not active, but still present, waiting for something. I've more or less come to accept that, but it's still been very strange being in the position of feeling like I need to hide this.
Although my classmates are generally fairly liberal, there's not the open diversity that one saw at Macalester. Most people act semi-professionally, which I generally appreciate, but which means that there is a sort of non-political conservativeness about the way we present ourselves. I've struggled for years over how visible my religion should be (even when I'm not actively practicing). I do believe that people are more accepting of things that are familiar, but at the same time I know that I could actually hurt my chances for a career by being too open about these things. It's frustrating.
So that's been it for the year, really. Finishing the novel and starting law school really overshadowed everything else. I think I had reached a very good life balance by the middle of the year, only for that to be completely knocked over when I started school. I hope I can hold that in the back of my mind for after I graduate and things calm down.
It's funny in hindsight how much spending the first eight months of the year working on the novel really helped me get through law school. It got me used to pushing on with something even when I was tired and thought I was horrible at it and didn't want to do it anymore, and forced me find ways to take care of myself while doing something very isolating. In a way law school was actually easier than the novel because I wasn't doing it alone - there were 42 other people in my section going through the same experience.
I'm so glad I ended up with the section that I did. There was some grousing during the end of semester get together about how our section didn't party together, but I think that we were actually a very balanced and down to earth group, which I think was more rewarding than having an extremely social group. Certainly there were a lot of people who spoke in class and were really engaged, something two or three of our professors commented on. I know I wouldn't have enjoyed the semester as much as I did if I hadn't had other people equally engaged in our discussions. And you know, I even managed to make a few friends, especially towards the end of the year.
There was a fair bit happening for my family this year as well. My relationship with my dad has been difficult sometimes, but generally good. My sister and I got to hang out for New Year's last year and have gotten better about talking more often. She's back in school too, which I find very awesome. Even though we don't plan it at all, we echo each other from time in time in ways that I find very amusing.
My mom sold the home my sister and I grew up in and spent most of the year living with her mother, my only surviving grandparent. Grandma turned 88 this year and hasn't been doing very well - she'll probably be moved into assisted living in the next few weeks. Mom had been wanting to get out of California and get a fresh state, and much to my surprise and happiness moved to Minnesota just a couple of weeks ago. I love having her here, and really hope she's able to make it through the winter because having family nearby is really amazing after spending the majority of the decade two time zones away.
And finally, I was single for the entirety of 2009. I joined a dating website for a while and went on five dates with three different guys (two from the site, one who I met at a party), but none of those worked out. It's been a constant difficulty for me dealing with being single, but looking back on it, I don't know that I would have changed it. I grew a lot this year, finding that balance in the first half of the year, the amazing accomplishment of editing the novel, and finally having a really great first semester of law school. Would I have done those things if I were in a relationship? I don't know. I do know that I get deeply lonely sometimes, but I also know that I can do just about anything on my own, and that's a good feeling. That doesn't mean without help, though. I'm amazingly grateful for my friends and my therapist, for helping me get through the very isolating job of writing, and the crazy transition that law school has been.
So four hours later, that's the year! I'm not much for resolutions, but I do think I'm going to make a goal to journal a bit more often, if nothing else than to help looking back on 2010 a year from now. It's been a good year, it really has. I realized a few weeks ago that, with only a couple of exceptions, every year for the last ten years (and maybe a bit longer than that) has been better than the year before. That's really pretty awesome. Here's to that continuing!
2009 can be split somewhat neatly into three sections: the deciding where to go to law school part, the writing part, and the attending law school part. I found out in January that I'd gotten into William Mitchell and Hamline, but didn't learn I was accepted to the U until slightly later. I want to say it was late January to early February. Once I'd been accepted to the U I was fairly sure that was where I would go, but I had some time where I wavered back and forth, especially given the differences in scholarships between the U and the other two schools.
Becky and I called the last day of February Super Friday because we got our bonuses that day (somewhat unexpected given the economy, but very welcome) and we went to see Jonathan Coulton. That was the concert where Bill Corbet, Kevin Murphey and Neil Gaiman showed up, and was absolutely amazing. Also amazing was the fact that my bonus check was large enough to completely pay off my credit card, which has maintained a zero balance ever since then and will until I'm responsible enough to remember to pay it off promptly at the end of the month.
I got a couple of fun gadgets in March too. I bought an AlphaSmart and my dad gave me a Kindle for my 26th birthday. I love both of them and used them heavily through the first half of the year, though I haven't used the former since starting school (it's really a writing tool and I just haven't written while I'm in school) and the latter only a handful of times. It makes me a bit melancholy reading about how focused my life was on reading and writing, both hobbies that I've had to let drop in the last three months.
Writing was omni-present in the first three quarters of the year. After finishing NaNo in 2008 I made a goal to actually finish the novel I'd started for NaNo 2006 and picked up again for NaNo 2008. I was writing fairly steadily through the first months of the year, and on April 6th finished a 136,899 word first draft. I jumped right into editing, which was a whole new thing for me. It's amazing in hindsight how much my writing ability improved through the five months I spent editing that thing. I got a lot of tips from blogs written by authors and people in the publishing industry, but a lot of it was just trial and error.
It's amazing to me how much leisure time I had before starting classes. I remember (and miss) the fairly sizable time I spent writing and reading, but I was also playing some WoW, going out with friends (particularly to the weekly pub quiz at Merlin's Rest) and spent several weeks watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD, something I enjoyed a lot in the beginning but eventually became so frustrated with that I put it down early in the last season and never went back to it. I was also walking a lot then - part of the way home from work 3-4 days a week, then in the summer I started jogging as well.
It's a bit sad reading my excitement in late April over gay-marriage being legalized in Iowa. There was a real hope for a while that there had been a turning of the tide, but that kind of petered out. One of the few disappointments I've had with President Obama has been his lack of support for gay rights. I understood even before he was elected that he's a more moderate politician than anyone gave him credit for, but I think I'd hoped that gay rights might be one area, somewhat safer than abortion, where he could really reach out to the liberal base.
Although I was very engaged in politics early in the year, as my focus turned to getting the novel done before law school I really dropped out of that. It was very frustrating as well to see the stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise (and straight out disrespect) coming from Washington. It's been a disappointment to me that the Republican party has clung to the religious social conservatives. I suppose I didn't expect there to be much compromise in government, but as someone who believes in healthy debate, it's frustrating to see people acting like idiots and refusing to even try to meet in a middle ground.
In early May I got my second tattoo. Now that I've had it for a few months I can say that I'm definitely happy with it. It's much more visible than the one on my lower back, and although I've had to explain it a few times, the act of doing that has made me more and more happy with it. Something I maybe didn't anticipate about law school is how focused on language it is, the power of words, the importance of saying things as accurately as possible. It's funny because of the stereotype of legalese, but it's also true.
I haven't written much about work because, although I spent eight hours a day there and another couple in transit, it really didn't stay with me much. I was working on a system redesign with our IT department, which was actually a very enjoyable project that did a lot for my confidence. I think it was the first time I felt that my input was actually sought out and appreciated. Other than that I think I was just killing time. I learned in April that I would be getting money from the U and sent in my deposit that month. My performance review was the first day of June. I'd gone back and forth on when to tell my boss I was leaving, but the review ended up being the perfect time to do it. I suspect that my boss knew I wasn't satisfied with my job, and he was very supportive of my decision to go back to school.
In June I attended the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention. This was both very rewarding and very difficult for me. I wrote about it here quite a bit. I wrote on twitter that maybe my self-esteem issues have kept me from realizing that I'm shy. This still strikes me as true. I think I used to think that the reason I had a hard time getting to know new people was because of lack of confidence, but with the convention, which happened at a time in my life where I was actually fairly happy with myself and my life, I still had a terrible time getting to know people, and didn't really feel comfortable talking to people until the very last day.
The worst day was probably the second of the three days, where I missed my bus because of a panel going late and would have had an hour wait when I was very tired. I became paralyzed over the thought to trying to get a ride home or waiting around talking to people and ended up breaking down in tears and (once I'd calmed down) taking a taxi home. In hindsight, it was all about when to push myself and when to just let things be. I have to push myself earlier in the experience of meeting new people, not towards the end when I'm exhausted. That level of anxiety is draining on every level. It was a good weekend for me realizing these things, but when it was done I felt like I'd run a marathon. It was such a relief to be back at pub quiz on Sunday night. I felt like myself again. Back in my comfort zone.
July more or less flew by. I had to go back to the beginning on editing again, but each time I did that it got better. I can't say exactly how many drafts I went through, as some sections got edited more often than others. The first couple of months of editing were spent doing fairly heavy rewrites, which is why I call the draft I finished in April the rough draft, and then I was mostly working on the middle and end bits. Sometimes I'd make a change that required starting over, but the first few chapters were fairly set after the first rewrite. Ben was an amazing help during all of this, reading multiple versions offering encouragement and brainstorming when I got really stuck. I owe him a lot for that. Writing is very isolating, and I don't think I could have done it without some regular feedback.
Because I was writing a fair bit about writing, especially in August when I was doing nothing BUT editing, I started getting requests to read the novel when it was done. It's both amusing and a bit sad to see how concerned I got about this. As it turned out, I sent copies to 15 or so people, and only ever got feedback from two of them (and that was pretty sparse). I've been struggling with this a bit recently, actually. I'd initially planned to spend this winter break really focused on rewriting, but that sort of relied on getting enough feedback to have an idea of what to do.
The self-doubt starts creeping in there too - maybe they started reading it and hated it but don't want to hurt my feelings. I think it's probably more that even with the edits it was more than 100,000 words, which is a lot to read, even in four months, and also I haven't exactly followed up with people on it. I realize too that I probably wouldn't have been able to do a good rewrite this break anyhow - leaving aside the fact that I'm going to Texas for a week to volunteer, my head just isn't in the right place. I needed the last week to really vegetate and recover from exams. Not only would I probably need more than a month for a good rewrite, I'd need time to actually meet with the people who managed to read the whole thing to discuss feedback, and that would have taken a lot of time too.
Well, maybe next summer. I really do intend on getting a draft of that novel to a state where I feel comfortable sending it to publishers, even if it takes a few years to get there. In the mean time I've been very slowly plotting out a new novel. In the past I've written mostly through NaNo - just sit down and type until the fingers fall off. LitG was the first novel I actually rewrote, in a way making it my first novel, and even that I didn't really plot out until after the rough draft was done. I realized that when I'm composing, I want to be writing nearly every day, and I just don't have the time for that right now. However outlining is something I can do, and I think it will be interesting to see how a novel turns out that's been planned out in advance.
August was a blur of editing several hours every day, working up to being able to jog a mile without switching to walking, and panicking about money. I set a goal to finish editing a chapter every other day and right at the end of the month had finished my first draft and went into a week of editing several chapters a day looking for specific technical issues. And then suddenly it was time for orientation at the U, the edits were done, the drafts were sent off, and that was it.
It's hard to write about the last four months. Law school has been completely different from anything I've done before. It's been amazing and difficult and terrifying all at once. It's been very, very hard work, but at the same time, everything has seemed to come so naturally that I've been frightened. I became one of the smart kids, and haven't quite figured out how to deal with that. In grade school I sort of took it for granted that I was smarter than most everyone around me, but because I generally took my head down, I didn't tend to get a lot of recognition (or if I did, I didn't notice it). In undergrad I felt like I blended into the crowd of smart people. Sometimes I even felt like I was one of the less smart ones, especially compared to my friends in computer science and the trivia crowd.
As much as I've spent much of the semester fighting against it, though, I have to accept that I did do very well in my classes and earned a fair bit of respect from some of my classmates as well. The frightening thing now is waiting to see if my grades reflect that. The last month of classes I found to be very melancholy, as I mentioned to one of my professors on one of the last days of classes. It feels like no matter how my grades are, that will color my next semester. If I do very well I'll want to maintain that, and if I don't do as well as I hoped then I may be more self-conscious about speaking in class, not to mention stressed about finding work.
The social aspect of school was maybe the most difficult, though never quite as hard as I expected it to be. It was more of a low level, ongoing strain of having to be “on” for such long periods of time. I worked a job where I didn't interact with other people much, and was especially self-conscious about how often I was speaking in class. I remember telling myself a few times that I wouldn't raise my hand as much, but then we'd be discussing something really interesting, or the professor would ask a question I knew the answer to, and I just couldn't help myself.
Another difficult thing with socializing is knowing that I needed to edit myself more than I ever had before, especially in regards to my religion. It's been another fallow year for me spiritually. I have this sense that my religion has been in hibernation for several years now - not active, but still present, waiting for something. I've more or less come to accept that, but it's still been very strange being in the position of feeling like I need to hide this.
Although my classmates are generally fairly liberal, there's not the open diversity that one saw at Macalester. Most people act semi-professionally, which I generally appreciate, but which means that there is a sort of non-political conservativeness about the way we present ourselves. I've struggled for years over how visible my religion should be (even when I'm not actively practicing). I do believe that people are more accepting of things that are familiar, but at the same time I know that I could actually hurt my chances for a career by being too open about these things. It's frustrating.
So that's been it for the year, really. Finishing the novel and starting law school really overshadowed everything else. I think I had reached a very good life balance by the middle of the year, only for that to be completely knocked over when I started school. I hope I can hold that in the back of my mind for after I graduate and things calm down.
It's funny in hindsight how much spending the first eight months of the year working on the novel really helped me get through law school. It got me used to pushing on with something even when I was tired and thought I was horrible at it and didn't want to do it anymore, and forced me find ways to take care of myself while doing something very isolating. In a way law school was actually easier than the novel because I wasn't doing it alone - there were 42 other people in my section going through the same experience.
I'm so glad I ended up with the section that I did. There was some grousing during the end of semester get together about how our section didn't party together, but I think that we were actually a very balanced and down to earth group, which I think was more rewarding than having an extremely social group. Certainly there were a lot of people who spoke in class and were really engaged, something two or three of our professors commented on. I know I wouldn't have enjoyed the semester as much as I did if I hadn't had other people equally engaged in our discussions. And you know, I even managed to make a few friends, especially towards the end of the year.
There was a fair bit happening for my family this year as well. My relationship with my dad has been difficult sometimes, but generally good. My sister and I got to hang out for New Year's last year and have gotten better about talking more often. She's back in school too, which I find very awesome. Even though we don't plan it at all, we echo each other from time in time in ways that I find very amusing.
My mom sold the home my sister and I grew up in and spent most of the year living with her mother, my only surviving grandparent. Grandma turned 88 this year and hasn't been doing very well - she'll probably be moved into assisted living in the next few weeks. Mom had been wanting to get out of California and get a fresh state, and much to my surprise and happiness moved to Minnesota just a couple of weeks ago. I love having her here, and really hope she's able to make it through the winter because having family nearby is really amazing after spending the majority of the decade two time zones away.
And finally, I was single for the entirety of 2009. I joined a dating website for a while and went on five dates with three different guys (two from the site, one who I met at a party), but none of those worked out. It's been a constant difficulty for me dealing with being single, but looking back on it, I don't know that I would have changed it. I grew a lot this year, finding that balance in the first half of the year, the amazing accomplishment of editing the novel, and finally having a really great first semester of law school. Would I have done those things if I were in a relationship? I don't know. I do know that I get deeply lonely sometimes, but I also know that I can do just about anything on my own, and that's a good feeling. That doesn't mean without help, though. I'm amazingly grateful for my friends and my therapist, for helping me get through the very isolating job of writing, and the crazy transition that law school has been.
So four hours later, that's the year! I'm not much for resolutions, but I do think I'm going to make a goal to journal a bit more often, if nothing else than to help looking back on 2010 a year from now. It's been a good year, it really has. I realized a few weeks ago that, with only a couple of exceptions, every year for the last ten years (and maybe a bit longer than that) has been better than the year before. That's really pretty awesome. Here's to that continuing!