Year in Review: Abundant Good Things Edition Redux

Happy almost New Year and New Decade, everyone!

As this year rapidly approaches its end, I want to harken back to the first end-of-year Abundant Good Things edition.  2014 was a remarkable and transformative year for me, as I then noted, filled with milestones and once-per-lifetime moments and achievements.

Looking back over this year, I am struck by how fitting that summary is for 2019 for what has happened in my personal life... and of course, how discordant it is with the greater world around me.  That contrast is particularly striking as I formulate what my resolutions will be for the coming year.  But I'm planning to get to that in another post.

For now, I want to wrangle my admittedly somewhat sleep-deprived and therefore underly-focused brain into reflecting on the good that happened this year, because it was, as today's title states, truly and humblingly abundant.

In generally chronological order:

• I continued doing work that I enjoy.

I just can't overstate how gigantic this is in setting the tone for my life and for this year.  I am in private practice with a colleague I deeply appreciate and respect.  This year, we became partners in our shared practice, with ideas for how to expand in the future.  I work at a hospital with which I'm proud to be affiliated.  I work with people I care about and who make me feel valued.  Finally, I am fully in charge of my work and thriving in that self-determination.  I am just so grateful to have arrived at this professional place this early in my career.

• In the first month of the year, Husband and I adopted a puppy.

After years of wanting a dog and repeatedly postponing because our living situations just weren't right for it, we took a chance on a foster-to-adopt event a 90 minute drive away and walked away with a sweet, meek, perhaps a bit sad-looking pup who promptly lost a baby tooth and then slept, bathed in relief and safety, on the long drive home.  Over his first year with us, he has blossomed into a gorgeous, intelligent, playful, loving little man.  He is excellent at fetch, receiving belly rubs, bounding rubber-limbedly across fields and carpeted rooms, thankfully and ever-so-gently accepting carrots and ice cubes as treats, and greeting people joyfully.  

• I attended several glorious weddings.

Over the year, multiple good friends and family members got married.  Each wedding was such a wonderful opportunity to celebrate love between people I care about and to enjoy the company of other friends and family.  In retrospect, I'm struck by how thoughtfully and beautifully personal each of the weddings I attended this year was to each couple.  It's such a privilege to be included in these rites of passage for people I care about.

• I became pregnant.

Obviously the most tectonic development of the year and, likely, of my life was being pregnant.  I'm extremely lucky to have had an altogether easy and uncomplicated pregnancy, which allowed me to keep working so I could financially prepare for the birth of my child and enabled me to keep enjoying my life outside of work so I could emotionally and practically prepare for the birth of my child.  This outcome is yet another manifestation of inequitably distributed privilege and resources in the United States, which I benefit from as a white person.

• Several family members achieved major academic milestones.

I'm so incredibly proud of my family's academic accomplishments this year, which include completing law school, medical school, graduate school (with a *second* Master's degree!), and college.

• Husband and I took not one, but two proper vacations*.

Last year, I acknowledged that the demands of working and moving meant that Husband and I hadn't been able to travel as much as I'd have liked, and that made me sad.  We have been extremely fortunate in recent years to be able to take really incredible trips (thanks, frankly, in huge part to family members helping us).  I have deeply savored those experiences during and long afterward.  One such trip contributed to last year's resolution to focus on learning more about my family's heritage.  

Beyond the obvious enjoyment potential of going on vacation, I've also come to regard taking vacations--or not--as a major bellwether for how tenable work is and how much I'm able to set and enforce limits and balance between work and my life outside of work.  Not taking proper vacations is a major warning sign that limits and balance are not happening in a healthy manner.

So, it's a huge source of happiness and relief that Husband and I were able to take two week-long vacations this year, including one to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary.

* = Just the two of us, not just a long weekend.

• I enjoyed several weekends with dear friends and family.

In addition to the more substantial trips Husband and I took together this year, I got to enjoy weekend trips to New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Savannah, Portland, Seattle, New Hampshire, and upstate New York to see people I love.  Among other things, I got to swim in a lake, attend graduations, eat delicious ice cream, go to a haunted prison, watch storm clouds roll in over a nighttime beach, eat pie and drink coffee in a classic New York diner, and eat oysters in Pike Place Market.  It was all pretty great!

• I saw even more great art.

I enjoyed some wonderful art thanks to some excellent museums, including one of my very favorites, and one I'd never been to before!

• I taught a college course.

I've wanted to teach for years--it's actually a significant part of the reason I pursued a PhD, as I was under the (perhaps false) impression that that degree would make it easier to get a teaching position.  So getting to teach a college class in its entirety was a huge professional milestone.  In an odd way, kind of snuck up on me: through collegial connections, I was offered the chance to teach a course this fall that I could write from scratch, and I accepted, and all of a sudden this was just a thing I got to do!  Teaching was an incredibly positive experience that I hope I get to replicate many times over.

• Husband and I BOUGHT A HOUSE.

What.  How.  What.  Even as I sit in this beautiful place, it is weird and stunning that this is a thing we did.  This is unquestionably the fruit of immense labor on Husband's part, because I would not have had the patience, persistence, and fortitude for a financial and logistical undertaking of this magnitude.  It seemed completely ridiculous as we were undertaking this process, but now that it's over, I am incomparably grateful we've done it.

• And, finally, my child was born.

Despite my considerable angst ahead of time, bizarrely, labor and delivery wasn't so bad.  And now, incredibly, a new person is here, and they are perfect.

With that: I am hopeful for the goodness that 2020 will bring, especially with this new person in the world.  

Happy New Year, dear friends!

{Heart}