A year in review

I know I've been bad about posting recently. In part, this has to do with the fact that my family has been in town for the holidays. Also, I've been a whirlwind of social activity (cough), which has put a damper on my blogging time. Mostly, though, I've been doing a lot of reflecting upon the past year. This has been a year of massive life changes, a year of heartache and euphoria, a year of transition, discovery, and revelation. I feel like 2006 has been the year of becoming an adult, and also of becoming more of a person than I was before. Don't get me wrong, I feel like I've always been a distinct personality with a concrete set of values and all that jazz. I just feel like this past year has forced me to define who I am and what I want. And, to be completely honest, I feel like the majority of that has hit me within the past few months. A quick-and-dirty list of the good, bad, and ugly of 2006:

1. Finishing school.
2. Resigning from a job for the first time, simply because it was a bad fit. Oh, and telling my boss that I disagreed with her ethics. Awesome.
3. Giving up on a love that I nurtured through thick and thin for a quarter of my life.
4. Learning how to let go of a friend.
5. Rebuilding my relationship with my sister after six years of living far apart.
6. Building a home for myself in a city I love.
7. Getting my first real job.
8. Hating my first real job.
9. Discovering that I can love my first real job.
10. Learning to accept my body as it is, without the need to torture myself.
11. Buying the world's greatest pair of jeans.
12. Beginning to pay off my student loans that resulted from seven years of college education.
13. Remembering that I am a girl.
14. OH! Starting a blog!!!
15. Ahem. Packing away my childhood teddy bears, because really, what 26-year-old woman should still be sleeping with those??? crickets
16. Reconnecting with lost friends.
17. Creating my own family (pictures to follow. I need more time to define exactly what I want to say on the subject.)
18. Pursuing someone who I'd liked for a while, with no assurances that my feelings were reciprocated.
19. Learning to hope that maybe my feelings were reciprocated.
20. Buying a sofa.
21. Letting go of (or, at least, learning to compromise on) a dream.

There are more, naturally. It was a big year, and one list cannot hope to contain all the changes. I look forward to 2007, feeling more hope than I have felt in a long time. I hope this is the year that I learn to take command of my own destiny. I hope this is the year when I accept that I am enough, just as I am. I hope this is the year when I will learn some great truth about the universe that rocks me to the core. Frankly, I hope this is the year when I love someone who rocks me to the core. And I hope this year I will grow more, with less hurt than in 2006. Maybe that's impossible, but it is what I hope for.

These are not resolutions, mind you. I'm saving that list for Monday. In the meantime, it is enough to just look back and remind myself how far I've come. Thanks, 2006. And please don't take offense to this, but I'm glad you're over!