2011: The Year of Living Dangerously Close to the Edge

I keep waiting for a year to come along that isn’t marked with adventures that keep life constantly in flux, but 2011 never even pretended to be such a year. It was all smack-talk and bluster right from the get-go.

Looking back over some of the events that made this year unique (our weather-foiled plans to get to the USA for Christmas and New Year’s, a hospital stay in February, a sun-kissed vacation to the Grecian isle of Rhodes in April, moving from England back to Wisconsin, health insurance worries, and getting reacquainted with the joys and affirmation that come from being gainfully employed-- just to name a few.) I’ve come to the realization that, despite my occasional anxiety over whether this life is one I am even somewhat temperamentally-suited for, I have landed exactly where I’m meant to be and it’s high time I start taking the time to try and figure out what it all means to me.

When I was a girl growing up on an isolated dairy farm in Missouri, I used books, music, computer games, movies, and my own elaborate fantasies of future fame and fortune to stave off the boredom that I felt constantly threatened my solitary country life. I always felt like I was too big, too much, too something for my quiet, rural surroundings and made myself insufferable for it, I’m sure, by the time high school rolled around.

In all seriousness, though, I can’t help but think about how much all the technology and internet resources available now could have changed my life back then… in good ways and bad, too, I’m sure. On one hand, I can only imagine the YouTube videos and animations I could’ve put all that creativity and endless curiosity of my youth into, using up all the many, many hours of free-time that I had to spare. On the other, I might’ve ended up squandering away all my time and just getting in tons of trouble on-line for doing all kinds of stupid things that only a super-ego inflated teenager is capable of. It remains what it was, however: years of reading anything I could lay my hands on and prepping to become the ultimate Master of Trivial Pursuit. Or to get into a great university. Whatever came first.

Back to my point: Even though I yearned for all the thrills of a life lived large in the city, I’m also a dedicated homebody who not only relishes my time alone-I need it. I never stopped to consider that a life of excitement, travel, children and marriage would be so fucking BUSY.

I hate to put it this way, but, honestly, my life requires way more active participation than I ever anticipated or desired. If I had my druthers, I’d like the occasional adventure followed by lots of time to examine it, understand it, find the humor in it and then entertain friends with the re-telling of it. But everything has been happening so quickly over the past few years, I’ve hardly had a chance to make a voice memo on my cel phone to remind me of an adventure that happened, much less write it down. And forget about examining or gaining a deeper understanding of it and telling a story only once is what I call “practice,” not actual story-telling.

So, even though I embrace the adventure that my marriage and children have brought to my life and I accept that I am as well-suited to this type of life as anyone could be…

I am resolved that in 2012, I will slow down and start writing about my life, travel, friendships, good fortune, and all the moments that really made me throw my hands up and hope to God that there was some kind of plan in place for me because I surely had shot all my own plans to shit.

Before I get a chance to do that, though, I still need to get my ass back to Wisconsin from gorgeous New Year’s vacation in Sarasota, Florida and a detour on the way home in Atlanta, to visit with great friends (and Destructo’s possible future wife, according to his 9-year-old heartfelt protestations of undying love) for a couple days.

After that, I’ll be heading to Las Vegas to the Consumer Electronics Show to cover the event for Microsoft. I don’t have a link up in my sidebar yet, but I joined their Windows Champions program a couple months ago because I am a huge believer in their Live Writer program for bloggers and Windows 7. I’m going to be turned loose at the conference with a film crew to find some of the coolest new tech from Microsoft (who is debuting some goodies from Windows 8) and others that I think we (you, me, other parent-minded people) can’t live without or will wish you had over the next year. It should be super fun, provided I don’t try and impress anyone by trying to wear heels all day.

Happy New Year!!!