Hello, 2019

Happy New Year

Oh, hi!

Yep, I’m still here. It’s been a while.

It’s been several months and a handful of big life events.

I just read my last post…from July! Is that the longest I’ve ever gone without publishing here?

It seems comical to me now, this idea of setting goals last summer, and making incremental changes in my life to move towards achieving them. There’s certainly a lot of value in visualizing what I want for myself, and I continue to do that. But what I didn’t anticipate at the time was how fast and hard life would happen to me over the next few months.

Seen on a wall at a local high school

I’ve been through it before, the unexpected turn that forces me to make a big change. I have long resisted change. I have long believed I could make a bad situation better.

But I can’t control people or nature.

View of the Woolsey Fire from our guest bathroom

My biggest lesson from the last 6 months: I can only control me. Maybe it’s a lesson I’ll have to learn over and over again. I’ll try to remember it this time.

All of this vague-blogging is to say that I ended up here: with new life experiences behind me that will hopefully make me a better, stronger person.

The most obvious change is that I started a new job a few weeks ago. I moved from communications in K-12 to higher education-graduate school (skipping college because I’m an overachiever). So far, so good. But my work won’t be the center of my life. I paid a hard price to learn that lesson.

My new workplace: a law school on the edge of the Pacific Ocean

View from the associate dean’s office

Also, I finished the first draft of my novel finally. I’ll be editing it next, probably for four more years (I kid! I hope it won’t take that long!).

Probably best of all is that the events and circumstances of the last few months brought new and wonderful people into my life.

Including but not limited to the founders of LV Fire Relief

Out of fire comes a phoenix, after all. That’s me.