Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Changes

Wow, it's been a long time. And in that time, I became an even bigger nerd than I already was (...am?). I code shell scripts in Unix all day. And I ADORE it. Every day is a new puzzle! It's totally rad. Okay, so we know that's not really all I do...I also get to play with Excel! What could be better than this job? [Okay, I know most everyone reading this will say, "Uh, yeah, I can think of a billion things better than coding in Unix and playing with Excel all day..." - but all you people who say that are just fooling yourselves. Just sayin']

But, the point of this post is not to talk about my new job. Or how nerdy I am. [I'll leave that to you to talk about on your own time. I already know how nerdy I am, so I feel no need to discuss it further.]

No, really, the point is to talk about change. It struck me the other day at JUST HOW MUCH my life has changed since this time last year. May 2006 was my first hint at relief from the hellish existence I lived while working at BES. May 2006 still had a couple in Boston whom I couldn't stand to be around. May 2006 was the last month that I could say I'd never known what it was like to be unemployed. May 2006 I had yet to ever have been evicted from an apartment. May 2006 I still lived in Cambridge, and was pining over a boy long gone who was soon to move out of the country. May 2006 I had a very different set of friends, a very different style of life, a very different way of looking at things.

It's funny how much can change in a year. May 2007: I work in an office so completely different in every possible way from BES, I can honestly say that they're polar opposites. May 2007: I love my job, I don't have need to think about leaving, and I'm excited about my prospects of growing with and moving up in the company. May 2007: I don't really care about that couple anymore...they don't affect me...they live in a different state...when I do see them, it's cool. May 2007: I look back on the last 12 months and realize that I was unemployed for 7 of them. Wow. May 2007: I have lived in 3 apartments in the last year (including the one I was at in May 2006 - from which we were eventually evicted). May 2007: I went from Cambridge to Beacon Hill, and then came back across the river into Somerville. May 2007: pining over a different boy, though oddly, this current one is also not in this country. [It's quite possible he's a hot French-Canadian...quite possible.] May 2007: I have settled into a good group of people that I'm comfortable with, and that I feel like myself around. May 2007: I feel very settled in how my life runs these days - I've found my groove, if you will. May 2007: I see things with a much more "chill" attitude these days. Things are what they are, work with what I have the control to change and let the rest happen as it will.

It's amazing to me to look back on this year. And it's amazing to me to see, with all of the changes that I've been through in one year, how little the world actually changes. It's humbling in a lot of ways. I feel a strong sense of place in the part of the world I'm carving out for myself, and yet, in spite of all that, the world continues to run - my LIFE continues to run - no matter what details change, big or small.

Last year, I was constantly thinking about how I could make it to a dance weekend, or any possible way to get me out of the city and away from my day-to-day life. This year, I love my day-to-day life, I travel to all sorts of events, I've been to Canada twice for AMAZING dance events. [Yes, that's a major feat for me, as funny as it may seem to you. It's true, even though I've lived in Minnesota my whole life, I'd never been to Canada before December of last year. When I say I was in Minnesota my whole life, I pretty much mean that literally (with a few small exceptions).]

So, with all of the changes that have occurred over the past year, I have to wonder how the next year will look. Will it be as tumultuous a ride as the past year has been? Will it be more so? Or will it be calm and give me a year of relative peace? Where will I be a year from now? Grad school? -Probably not quite yet. In a different city? -Possible, but not likely...I like my current job way too much. In a different country? -Not very likely yet, although it is true that I have been saying for the last six months that I want to move to Montreal. Or more drastic than that even: married? -yikes, that would be crazy.

Ah well, time to sit back and enjoy the ride. One last observation before signing off, though: it's funny that I measure years on the Mays. It's the 5th month of the year...not like it's a quarter or halfway through. Not like it's January or December. Not even like it's my birthday month (it's not). I guess it always just seems to be the beginning of a bunch of changes, or a really new thing, or the month that I start looking forward to big changes or big events coming up in my life. Thinking about it, I've measured years on the Mays for quite awhile now. At least since college, since we took our last finals in the first week of June. But it's possible I even started before then. Maybe it's left over from the school mentality...because May's the last full month of school before summer vacation. So perhaps it's not quite that odd. Whatever, I still think it's a bit odd.

And on a loosely related subject, I'm now totally reminded of "Seasons of Love" from Rent... How do you measure a year?

In daylights?
In sunsets?
In midnights?
In cups of coffee?
In inches?
In miles?
In laughter?
In strife?
In five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes...?

Or...
In diapers?
Report cards?
In spoked wheels?
In speeding tickets?
In dollars?
Contracts?
In funerals?
In births?


As for me, my measures are more like:

In career paths...
In apartments...
In new roommates...
In number of dance events...

But most importantly:

In distance from Mays...

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