Sunday, December 31, 2006
2006 -- The Year of Change
(New York was great and stories will follow on January 1 -- today's the day for the traditional "Year in Review" thingy)
The Chinese have the Year of the Snake, the Year of the Dragon, and so on, but no Year of the Change. Maybe they should, because let's face it, some years have more change than others.
One big change, unfortunately, was the crash of Diary-X early this year which took away my journal. I have backups of about the first 4 years, which I still need to finish uploading, but sadly there's about a 16-month period that has disappeared. Including, of course, last year's December 31st entry. So who knows what I predicted????
In January we made the final decision to return to DC from Colorado, and I got serious about finding a position here. I ended up getting my number 1 choice after one day of interviewing here, so at least we had that settled. Adrian and I thought we'd found a place to live, a new condo being built close to some of our friends, but after getting home we realized it was a little more expensive than we could handle and we backed off.
It wasn't long before February came around and we discovered where we would live...on Craigslist. Damn, that thing is good. We saw a condo for sale that looked really nice and also pretty reasonable. I came back here for work and took some time to come chack the place out. It looked good, so after talking it over with Adrian, we signed a contract when I was back here for work in February, and on March 10th Adrian and I closed on the condo. It was the first home we ever bought together and to me this was as close as we could get to being married. A very, very important day.
We sold our Colorado house after one day on the market in April. We are amazing. Some of that is no doubt due to the tons of landscaping rock we moved around.
We both came out here for work in April and Adrian stayed for a week to paint our new place. Once we managed to move here in June -- and our furniture arrived 3 weeks later -- Adrian designed a great space using our old stuff as well as new. We've had a couple big parties and a few small gatherings here and everyone loves the place. We pretty much do, too.
The new job has its moments. It's not fantastic, but I'm pretty much getting what I bargained for, so I can't really complain. I came here to work on Southeast Asian issues for the government and once I arrived my job quickly shifted to Europe. Not terrible, of course, but hey, I've been to Europe plenty of times and I'd like to learn more about, and visit, Asia. The bosses have promised I can stay engaged in Asia, but bosses' promises aren't worth much. Unless I'm the boss, of course.
Speaking of jobs, the day I left Colorado I was asked to return and interview for the department chair position in Political Science. I finally agreed to do so, more because I didn't want to burn bridges than because I wanted the job. I really don't feel like returning to Colorado, and this would be for about 10 years, so I didn't put my heart into it. They only interviewed 5 of us, I am pretty sure I was the #3 choice, and number 1 pulled out later while number 2 may not be available when they want her. So, it looks like I'd have a good shot at it...but I withdrew my name in early December. I thought about it and thought about it and as much as I enjoy teaching, I just don't want to do it there. Plus, let's face it, being a department chair is more about administration than academics and research anyway.
It was a year for travel. During my teaching I travelled to San Diego, which I hadn't been to in a few years, and also made my first trip to Moscow! I studied the language back in college so it was nice to finally put it to use all these years later. One thing I will say is that I'm glad I saw it when someone else was paying for it because, to be honest, I didn't really care for it. I didn't find the Russians to be very friendly, either professionally or personally, so if I don't go back again that's OK. But honestly, that's about what I expected, so I'm not really disappointed. They're pretty messed up over there, and I wish them all the best, but change needs to happen from the inside and I don't know if they're going to be able to grow the way they'd hoped.
As we moved out here we visited Omaha, where we saw my best friend from high school. We talked about it, and decided we could almost live in Omaha someday. We'd need to have a bunch of our friends with us, though.
Once I started my new job I hit Seattle, Honolulu, and Germany, but so far no place new. I am scheduled to hit Vietnam in February, though, so hopefully I can then blog about a new experience. In terms of personal travel, though, this was a good year...since October I have visited Bangkok, Singapore, Toronto, and had a few trips to New York. More on this later.
In the process of all this travel I have made some new friends, including most especially Ethan here in DC and Allan in Singapore. I also got to finally meet Jerwin in Toronto after knowing each other online for something like 6 or 7 years. I've also met a few folks along the way that I will keep in touch with and hopefully get to know better, like Jase, Tom, Eric, and Paul. It was also a year for reconnecting, getting the chance to see Raberd again in Bangkok and running around with Scooter and his partner Chris in NYC.
There have been some changes over the year with regard to Adrian's family. His brother Khamla graduated from the same cosmetology school as Adrian, and I am very proud of him. Adrian's father has started shaking my hand and his mother has even hugged me a couple times. That's a huge change, considering that when she first met me she would not even look at me. I guess a few years have convinced her I'm not too bad. Also, I've gotten to know his nephew a lot better and have spent some time tutoring him in math, which unfortunately is not my strongest subject.
I've changed "me" a bit too. I'm making plans for a big career change in 2009 and am spending the time now figuring out exactly what I want to do, and then how to do it, and that's good. I've gone back and forth with the gym but the bottom line is that my body has changed to a form I don't really like (though let's be honest, I'm NEVER happy with my body), and that's not quite as good. One of the funnest new things I did this year: dance. Yeah, I started hip-hop class on my birthday. How cool is that? I was hoping that once I got here my friend Dancin' Mike (he of Step Up fame) would be my new dance coach, but alas, he has flown off to Barcelona to go to design school (and is doing VERY well in the process).
The biggest change, unfortunately, has been "us." On my birthday/our anniversary this year, Adrian gave me a wedding band, and of course when we bought the condo that, to me, was like a marriage. Unfortunately, 2 months after we moved in he broke up with me. His reasons were mostly about problems he had with himself rather than with me, though there was some confusion about that as time went on. There are all sorts of issues involved in this, which is natural for a nearly 6-year relationship, and I will say that over time I began to assert myself better when it comes to how I feel about all this. This was the reason for all my solo, personal travel in the fall: a desire to just run away, and also take the trips that I knew Adrian wouldn't be interested in but that I wanted to take, like to SE Asia and Toronto. Hey, you can't get much farther away from your problems than the other side of the world. An upturn came toward the end of the year when Adrian suggested he would like to try to work things out and get us back to a good place instead of giving up on everything we had. I agreed, but also told him there was no guarantee that we would resolve this and come back together, and some things would really need to be worked on so these problems wouldn't happen again. I suppose on December 31st of next year I'll be able to provide all the answers to this.
I've had some adventures this year, and am looking forward to some great ones in 2007. I have some ideas about what I want to do and where I want my life to go, but who knows? 2006 had lots of surprises and I ended up somewhere pretty different than I expected last year. Then again, isn't that what makes life so great?
Happy New Year, everyone!!!!!
The Chinese have the Year of the Snake, the Year of the Dragon, and so on, but no Year of the Change. Maybe they should, because let's face it, some years have more change than others.
One big change, unfortunately, was the crash of Diary-X early this year which took away my journal. I have backups of about the first 4 years, which I still need to finish uploading, but sadly there's about a 16-month period that has disappeared. Including, of course, last year's December 31st entry. So who knows what I predicted????
In January we made the final decision to return to DC from Colorado, and I got serious about finding a position here. I ended up getting my number 1 choice after one day of interviewing here, so at least we had that settled. Adrian and I thought we'd found a place to live, a new condo being built close to some of our friends, but after getting home we realized it was a little more expensive than we could handle and we backed off.
It wasn't long before February came around and we discovered where we would live...on Craigslist. Damn, that thing is good. We saw a condo for sale that looked really nice and also pretty reasonable. I came back here for work and took some time to come chack the place out. It looked good, so after talking it over with Adrian, we signed a contract when I was back here for work in February, and on March 10th Adrian and I closed on the condo. It was the first home we ever bought together and to me this was as close as we could get to being married. A very, very important day.
We sold our Colorado house after one day on the market in April. We are amazing. Some of that is no doubt due to the tons of landscaping rock we moved around.
We both came out here for work in April and Adrian stayed for a week to paint our new place. Once we managed to move here in June -- and our furniture arrived 3 weeks later -- Adrian designed a great space using our old stuff as well as new. We've had a couple big parties and a few small gatherings here and everyone loves the place. We pretty much do, too.
The new job has its moments. It's not fantastic, but I'm pretty much getting what I bargained for, so I can't really complain. I came here to work on Southeast Asian issues for the government and once I arrived my job quickly shifted to Europe. Not terrible, of course, but hey, I've been to Europe plenty of times and I'd like to learn more about, and visit, Asia. The bosses have promised I can stay engaged in Asia, but bosses' promises aren't worth much. Unless I'm the boss, of course.
Speaking of jobs, the day I left Colorado I was asked to return and interview for the department chair position in Political Science. I finally agreed to do so, more because I didn't want to burn bridges than because I wanted the job. I really don't feel like returning to Colorado, and this would be for about 10 years, so I didn't put my heart into it. They only interviewed 5 of us, I am pretty sure I was the #3 choice, and number 1 pulled out later while number 2 may not be available when they want her. So, it looks like I'd have a good shot at it...but I withdrew my name in early December. I thought about it and thought about it and as much as I enjoy teaching, I just don't want to do it there. Plus, let's face it, being a department chair is more about administration than academics and research anyway.
It was a year for travel. During my teaching I travelled to San Diego, which I hadn't been to in a few years, and also made my first trip to Moscow! I studied the language back in college so it was nice to finally put it to use all these years later. One thing I will say is that I'm glad I saw it when someone else was paying for it because, to be honest, I didn't really care for it. I didn't find the Russians to be very friendly, either professionally or personally, so if I don't go back again that's OK. But honestly, that's about what I expected, so I'm not really disappointed. They're pretty messed up over there, and I wish them all the best, but change needs to happen from the inside and I don't know if they're going to be able to grow the way they'd hoped.
As we moved out here we visited Omaha, where we saw my best friend from high school. We talked about it, and decided we could almost live in Omaha someday. We'd need to have a bunch of our friends with us, though.
Once I started my new job I hit Seattle, Honolulu, and Germany, but so far no place new. I am scheduled to hit Vietnam in February, though, so hopefully I can then blog about a new experience. In terms of personal travel, though, this was a good year...since October I have visited Bangkok, Singapore, Toronto, and had a few trips to New York. More on this later.
In the process of all this travel I have made some new friends, including most especially Ethan here in DC and Allan in Singapore. I also got to finally meet Jerwin in Toronto after knowing each other online for something like 6 or 7 years. I've also met a few folks along the way that I will keep in touch with and hopefully get to know better, like Jase, Tom, Eric, and Paul. It was also a year for reconnecting, getting the chance to see Raberd again in Bangkok and running around with Scooter and his partner Chris in NYC.
There have been some changes over the year with regard to Adrian's family. His brother Khamla graduated from the same cosmetology school as Adrian, and I am very proud of him. Adrian's father has started shaking my hand and his mother has even hugged me a couple times. That's a huge change, considering that when she first met me she would not even look at me. I guess a few years have convinced her I'm not too bad. Also, I've gotten to know his nephew a lot better and have spent some time tutoring him in math, which unfortunately is not my strongest subject.
I've changed "me" a bit too. I'm making plans for a big career change in 2009 and am spending the time now figuring out exactly what I want to do, and then how to do it, and that's good. I've gone back and forth with the gym but the bottom line is that my body has changed to a form I don't really like (though let's be honest, I'm NEVER happy with my body), and that's not quite as good. One of the funnest new things I did this year: dance. Yeah, I started hip-hop class on my birthday. How cool is that? I was hoping that once I got here my friend Dancin' Mike (he of Step Up fame) would be my new dance coach, but alas, he has flown off to Barcelona to go to design school (and is doing VERY well in the process).
The biggest change, unfortunately, has been "us." On my birthday/our anniversary this year, Adrian gave me a wedding band, and of course when we bought the condo that, to me, was like a marriage. Unfortunately, 2 months after we moved in he broke up with me. His reasons were mostly about problems he had with himself rather than with me, though there was some confusion about that as time went on. There are all sorts of issues involved in this, which is natural for a nearly 6-year relationship, and I will say that over time I began to assert myself better when it comes to how I feel about all this. This was the reason for all my solo, personal travel in the fall: a desire to just run away, and also take the trips that I knew Adrian wouldn't be interested in but that I wanted to take, like to SE Asia and Toronto. Hey, you can't get much farther away from your problems than the other side of the world. An upturn came toward the end of the year when Adrian suggested he would like to try to work things out and get us back to a good place instead of giving up on everything we had. I agreed, but also told him there was no guarantee that we would resolve this and come back together, and some things would really need to be worked on so these problems wouldn't happen again. I suppose on December 31st of next year I'll be able to provide all the answers to this.
I've had some adventures this year, and am looking forward to some great ones in 2007. I have some ideas about what I want to do and where I want my life to go, but who knows? 2006 had lots of surprises and I ended up somewhere pretty different than I expected last year. Then again, isn't that what makes life so great?
Happy New Year, everyone!!!!!
Labels: Life
Comments:
Links to this post:
<< Home
It sounds like most of the changes were good this past year.
I hope you and Adrian are able to work things out.
I hope you and Adrian are able to work things out.
Thanks, CR. I agree there were some good changes in 2006, and perhaps they outweighed the bad, but the year definitely felt...different.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
<< Home
