Actually, they say it's MY birthday.
Actually, *I* say it's MY birthday.
Actually ... it IS my birthday!
Yes, in case you didn't guess from that brilliant opening, today is my birthday! I am super excited except for the fact that work is nuts right now and I have to be there at around 7am today! LAME.
Man, what can I say about my birthday? This has been a GREAT year for me. Twenty-eight: good times. This was the year I:
- Moved in with Shaun! Huge step for us, and one neither of us have ever taken before. So far, so good!
- Got a fabulous new job! Finally, a job that's in my field (writing/new media), that is challenging, interesting, fun, and pays great. Such a relief after the many years I spent at a job that was NOT in my field, only challenging in the bad ways, and paid way less than my current job. I can't even tell you how good it feels to be moving in the right direction, career-wise. Finally!
- Got my weight-loss-shit together and lost 60 lbs! I don't need to say much more about that because, well, I've already written 200 blog posts about it.
Lots of smaller good things too, like getting my laptop, starting this blog, having my brother visit me in Toronto for the first time since I moved here (5 years ago!), and getting to meet his first truly serious girlfriend, taking up World of Warcraft (yes, I'm a nerd!), finally learning to knit socks, taking a trip to Vegas(!!!), taking boot camp and getting in decent shape, all my back pain going away, nice holidays with friends, fitting into size 16 jeans, making new friends at work, buying a new couch, etc. etc!
Some not so great things happened as well, and I was going to type some of them out, but I just decided right now that I don't want to dwell on them. They are what they are, but they aren't what *I* am, if that makes sense.
So, what's next? Twenty-nine! I hope it's going to be as good a year as the last. I have a few goals in mind -- well, not goals, necessarily, but things I want to focus on this year. I feel like ... hmm, I guess I feel like this is the last year of my 20's, so this is the time to get some stuff in order.
To be honest, I think that's one of the reasons the weight loss thing finally clicked for me this year. I just woke up one day, realized I had basically missed most of my 20s on account of being fat and hating it. I knew that weight was something I just DID NOT want to be dealing with in my 30s. I may have thrown away my 20s, but that was IT. That was all I was willing to waste.
Anyway, tangent aside! Things I want to do in 29:
- Take up running! I've been thinking about this all summer, and I decided to make myself wait until now to start. I decided that running would be something I would do after my birthday. That way next year I could say that 29 was the year I started running.
- Get to my weight loss goal! Still not entirely sure what this is, though, so that makes it tricky, but I suppose it probably means losing about another 40 lbs or so. We will see.
- Be a better housekeeper! This is probably my goal every year, but I think it's another one of those things that's finally starting to sink in: I don't want to be 30 and feel like I still live in a college apartment with dirty dishes and cat hair every where!
- Get my finances in order! This is huge and I am surprisingly excited. In fact: guess what I'm 'giving myself' for my birthday? I'm paying off one of my student loans! Yes, I'm SICK of looking at it, so today, on my birthday, as my birthday gift to myself, I'm throwing down $4000 and BURYING THAT SUCKER.
How mature am I, RIGHT? Paying down debt on my birthday! I'm like, a GROWN-UP. Actually, I'm like a really really really BORING grown-up!
Of course, I have some fun things I want to do this year too, like: learn to knit cables, go on a relaxing 'resort vacation', see more of my friends, be a better blogger, buy a digital SLR camera and start taking more photos, be more assertive and take more of a leadership role at work, get more pedicures, finally figure out what the frig is happening on Lost, etc.
It's going to be a good year, I think. I'm going to make it a good year.
(If you've read this far, thank you! And thank you, as always, for being with me through lots of the stuff that happened last year, and thank you, I hope(!), for sticking with me through the next year.)
