- Traveled a bunch: Texas, SnowCon in Denver, Nashville, Mammoth Caves, Las Vegas, the Natchez Trace, my mom's house in Mississippi, and England.
- Told my birth story on my blog and finally achieved peace about what happened.
- Got snowed in!
- Planned (with Jenn) and attended our awesome ATLOSCon.
- Was witness when Livy learned to read!
- Really found my place in my education and future career plans. I started work in the writing center, which will be my research focus, and started planning my thesis, a study of "tutoring for transfer." I also found that my teaching and tutoring work and research is deeply connected to the positive discipline work Jenn and I have been doing for years. Yay integration!
- Did lots of podcasting and speaking engagements, also with Jenn.
- Gave Crossfit a good try and decided it wasn't for me, at least not right now. Did lots of walking (and I mean lots) to train for the England trip. Fitness level definitely rose this year.
- Grew a very productive vegetable garden in containers.
- Had an amazing summer of leisure with Livy full of nothing but fun, learning, and adventures.
- Accepted the apology of a person who deeply wronged me and hurt me badly and learned to let go of being angry.
- Led an Ender's Game Reading Group for ATLOS.
- Faced up to jealousy of a friend and let that go too. This has been a big year for letting go and for peace.
- Read about 40 gazillion books. When I get home, I'll do my end of the year book stat post. Until then, here's my post about the books I read in the first half of the year.
- Got better (but still not perfect, of course) at communicating effectively. I really practiced this year, and, as you can see from all the letting go and such, I had lots of chances to work on it.
- Made lots of new friends at school and really felt, for the first time, that I am a part of that social community, including finding a great new friend and mentor who is farther along in the program than I am.
- Deepened some existing friendships, grew apart from others, spent time with family, loved Aaron and Livy violently.
- Wrote a lot on this blog and at school. My writing, both narrative and academic, improved.
- This blog morphed into a travel blog, pretty much. Don't know if it will stay that way, but this was a year of serious travel for me.
I am excited about starting 2012. It will be my first year to teach a freshman writing course, and we are already planning two trips for next year (a roadtrip to the Northwest this summer and (probably) Costa Rica over Christmas. Never in my life have I had such a great year or looked forward to such another one. My thirties are turning out to be my best decade ever, full of fun and love and getting emptier and emptier of the insecurities and worries of my twenties. Look for a resolution post for the new year in a day or two.
P.S. As I chose labels for this post, I had to choose nearly every label on my blog because it seems I spent the whole year all wrapped up in all my favorite values. No wonder it was such a good year. I can't even think of anything bad that happened in it! (Though Aaron says that doesn't mean it didn't happen, I live by Elizabeth Bennet's philosophy: "Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.") In the end, I had to delete all those labels because there were too many for Blogger to accept.
