2011 Year In Review

Overall, 2011 was a successful, but very challenging, year. I feel like I've accomplished a lot, but pretty much all of my successes have been hard-won and/or involved a fair amount of personal sacrifice or struggle on my part. It wasn't a coincidence that I left Matt right before school started, and the fallout from that made an already difficult semester that much more so. In a way, school completely eating my life helped me escape the suckitude of my day-to-day existence, but it also rendered me less able to do things that I enjoy (also, social work coursework can be pretty soul-sucking if you don't take care of yourself). Volunteering with foster kids has been every bit as awesome as I thought it would be, but it has also entailed a lot of hard decisions in situations where there aren't any right answers. Dealing with everything was pretty tough, and even though I am pleased with the outcomes of my choices thus far, only time will tell if the risks I've taken this past year will prove worthwhile.

Things I accomplished in 2012:

• Getting into and attending graduate school, along with earning a 4.0 for my first semester.
• Learning (some) Spanish.
• Finally signing up for my volunteering gig with foster kids that I don't get to blog about. 
• Reading (and mostly reviewing) eighty books (even though I didn't finish any of my book challenges because grad school ate my life). 
• Learning a number of new recipes (which has sadly stopped since I moved back in with my dad, who does all the cooking).
• Knitting (and crocheting) a bunch of cool stuff. 
• Getting back into running. 

Overall, I managed to fulfill most of my New Year's Resolutions from last year. The only ones that fell completely by the wayside are the ones that were Matt-related (swimming and cooking), so I feel pretty good about the way they turned out. I'll post 2012's tomorrow; I haven't finished them yet.