It's been a decade since 2000. A whole decade has passed - I have successfully completed my 20's, a BA and MA, a relationship, a cross-country move to the east coast and back, a (more than) few jobs, a (more than) few friends, and a few mishaps, to say the least. I've gained 65 pounds and lost 25 pounds; I've cut off a few friends and gained a few more. And after one complete decade in my adult life, I can honestly say how fast 10 years goes, and if the next ten years goes as fast as this one did, I'm bound for being a crazy old lady much sooner than I had prepared for.
But this blog post is actually just about looking at the past year, so that's what I'll try to focus on. The spring was lazy, well, lazy with a full courseload, a much colder and snowier winter than we were used to, a polyp surgery for Amber, and a first completed PhD year for me. It was a crazy year of traveling. We went to Minneapolis twice (once for a romantic getaway in blustery January, and the second time for an old college friend's beautiful wedding). We went back to my alma mater, Augsburg College, during my first trip back there, and walked in the same quad where I had walked ten years prior. It's odd being gone from a place for so long - never having visited after you left that life and those friends and that era. It's almost like walking through a memory, through a movie set of one of your past lives. I didn't know anyone on campus at that point, and I didn't really want to, but I started to remember things, the way I felt mostly at the ages of 18-22 alone in Minneapolis, that I hadn't felt in a long time. I knew the roads, too. You always know that you have lived in a place when you visit there again years later and still know how to get around.
In the summer, I helped my friend, the one I moved out to Balimore with in 2005, move back to Madison in her UHaul. I really feel like I'm getting to know the Wisconsin to Maryland route, in a UHaul, quite well. Then we were off to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was a new region for me to explore, and one of the most spiritual and truly beautiful places I've ever been to. The road trip, the movement through these spaces, was just as profound as our destination at the Center's annual portfolio review for Amber. On the way back, we had to take a different route, of course, through different states. We drove along Route 66 from New Mexico to Texas to Oklahoma to Missouri and finally Illinois. I'll always remember reading the Route 66 history to Amber on my iPhone's wikipedia app. It's funny the things we know we'll remember and the things we think we'll forget, but end up remembering anyway in the oddest of circumstances.
Then there was London. I have the know-how and I'm well-traveled enough to travel alone internationally, but I have to say after having been with Amber nearly three years, I was lonely-without-wanting-to-be during my first few days in London. I had a great experience with my Democracy course, and I loved trying to navigate the windy, unnamed streets, but I was happy to come home. I'll never forget my afternoon of solitude at an open-air cafe in Notting Hill, though. That was the best.
It's funny how my memories and stories have always not only been split up chronologically, which isn't s surprise, but also by the academic calendar. Spring is for taking cooler classes, Summer is for conferences and traveling, and Fall is for getting down to business. I'm not sure if I'll ever get out of this mindset because I actually kind of like it - not just because I'm a weird academic, but because the energy and rhythms of the university actually directly align with the seasons, and the weather, and the pulse of me. This fall has been a blur - sure, I tried to fit the quitessential fall activities in: apple picking at a lovely Mississippi town in SW Wisconsin; birthday weekend at an inn in a historic mill town; dressing up as Lucille Ball for Halloween (the red wig was a little much); but these moments are a backdrop, like it or not, to my intellectual pursuits - I spend a lot of time in my head, which I very well should be as a second year doctoral student at UW - but these little getaways, even if it's just down the street for a walk or to do dishes or a romantic dinner, help me stay grounded - there's a life outside of the campus and grad school! I have to remind myself of that.
And this winter. It came on suddenly, with a snow storm shortly after Thanksgiving. I was ready for it - or at least in the mandatory (it seems) holiday spirit - listening to 94.9 Christmas music all the time since mid-November. We had put up the tree, wrapped a few presents (or at least had the presents wrapped FOR us under the tree!) and even started thinking about our trip to Baltimore after Christmas, but in true Midwestern spirit, I don't feel it's Christmas-time until the first snowfall. And it's not really Christmas unless it's a White Christmas.
And that's where I'm at right now - at peace after a long, stressful semester - one of the busiest to date. It's quieter now, with only about 5,000 more words to write and two more papers to upload to an email. All the presents wrapped, kisses given, cats fed, plans made. I can breathe, and breathe I should. 2011 isn't proving to be any less sordid, any less adventurous, or any less crazy. But that doesn't mean I don't want to jump right into the next decade with both feet - and hands, and eyes, and heart - forward.
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