2010

This year I gave up my full-time field technician wanderings, and gave in to full-time sessile student life. I summered out west in Colorado, backpacked, rafted and hiked many a summer day away. It was the year I fell in love and had my heart broken in two; the year I closed a bittersweet chapter of my life in Gotham.

It’s the year I got stupid, soft and vulnerable; the year I wanted to hit the next person who told me I was a “strong woman.” It was the year I returned to woodcarving. And decided that if I wanted better abs, I needed to work at it. I started baking and discovered black walnut ice cream in 2010. I also started running seriously – no mere coincidence I’m sure.

I had something to prove to myself this year, namely, that it is possible to teach an old dog like me new tricks. I got through my first semester back in academia after a 13-year hiatus, and did much better than I could have hoped.

2010 is the year I moved back into a house for the first time since ‘97, and bought a bike, my first since a teen. I also decided I deserved a queen-size bed. And found a kindly Malaysian man in the Midwest who sourced for me a granite mortar and pestle, just like the one I used in my mother’s kitchen growing up.

I meshed my rugged outdoorsy side with a softer more feminine side that’s been shelved for a couple of years, when my dresses, skirts, bags and shoes were dusted off storage and back within arms reach. I suited up for Halloween, quite literally, donning a pinstriped business suit for the first time in 3+ years as my disguise of a past life. This year I found new friendships and forged older ones. I started collecting books again, and framing artwork.

Ahhh, the accumulation of material goods. A sign of roots, surely? But perhaps these roots are just as deep as my herb garden… a seasonal passion, a step in mid-air till it’s time to skip on by.