I've been meaning to write this blog post for a couple of weeks, but life gets in the way. I had my annual departmental seminar on December 18th, so the six weeks beforehand were spent trying to get a last minute data crunch to show new material.
For my 27th year, I decided to take the year for myself both personally and professional. It was a year of growth where I learned a lot about myself, my limits, and in the end, learned to love myself, faults and all. My 26th year was a struggle for me both personally and professionally, but you can go explore that in earlier blog posts... I am not going to re-hash all the ugly details at this point.
Here are the things that I did for myself over the last year.
1) Learned to love myself. This is the most important thing I did for myself. I had pretty low self-esteem and this year I worked hard to change that. I can honestly say that I am now at a place where I am absolutely content and happy with who I am. It took a lot of soul searching and honestly some really depressing days before I realized how awesome I really am! In addition to being comfortable in my skin, I gained the confidence to do things by myself that I never would have done in the past. I took two business trips this year for conferences in Boston and New York. In both cities, I took off on my own, iPhone in hand for navigation, and explored the cities on my own. It was wonderful just to figure things out on my own and I did not feel afraid or unsafe in the cities exploring. If I felt a little anxious, I just called someone and talked with them until I reached my destination.
2) I got fit! One of my goals this year was to lose about 20 lbs. I am proud to say through hard work and dedication, that I successfully lost 20 lbs. I am in some of the best shape of my life and my body is rocking! I achieved this goal through employing my personal trainer, Mike, at 24 hour fitness and completely changing my diet. I started doing a weightlifting regiment 3 days a week and am hour of cardio 5 times a week (theoretically... I haven't been doing as well lately since I have been so busy with work, my personal life, and a pesky ankle injury).
3) Changed my eating habits. I am not saying that my eating habits were all that bad before this year, but I definitely buckled down on eating junk food and portion size. I am trying to limit my soda intake to a couple times a month. I cut down on all fried foods, processed foods. I increased the amount of fresh vegetables and fruits that I eat everyday. I also switched from eating 3 giant meals a day to eating more frequent, smaller portioned meals. I've also tried to eliminate going out to eat as much as possible.
4) Conquered fears!! Ever since I could remember, I've had a terrifying fear of heights. Of course, my family liked to exploit this fear by making me go on bridges, tall buildings, towers, etc... In June, I decided to see if doing the crazy thing of jumping out of an airplane would help cure from height fear. It turns out that it actually did! I went skydiving on June 1, 2012 in Longmont, CO. It was absolutely awesome! I had such an adrenaline rush for the rest of the day! I tested my new fangled dis-fear of heights in September when I was in New York. I went to the top of the Empire State Building and looked over the edge of the building. Normally when I do this, I get a huge sense of vertigo... But, this time I didn't feel a thing. FEAR OF HEIGHTS = GONE!!!
5) Tried new things! This year I stepped out of my comfort zone with a lot of things! I tried rock climbing (both sport with a rope and bouldering without a rope) for an Ovarian Cancer fundraiser that I was doing. Turns out that I am completely fearless when it comes to climbing! My friend Tuttle is impressed how quickly that I have picked up climbing and doing certain moves. This year, I also tried my hand at organic gardening by having a community garden plot at Delaney Farms. It was definitely a challenge this year because it was such a dry, hot summer and the plots were overrun with rabbits and bugs. I grew a variety of vegetables and now know my limits as to how many of each plant to grow and to start early next year! Hand in hand with my garden, I also tried a lot of new foods this year. Until this year, I was scared of squashes and zucchini for some odd reason. They are now some of my favorite starches to eat. I had enough produce to give away to other hungry grad students and to feed myself. I am planning to get a garden again next year. :)
6) Made some more new amazing friends! This year I became a lot closer with some other people in my program and also through friends of friends. I could not have made it through some of the shit this year without Kristen, Tullia, Waugh Waugh, and Tuttle keeping me grounded when I needed to calm the f*%$ down. Thanks to everyone that I have met through the various journeys in life. Your support throughout the years is much appreciated!
7) Dating adventures. I tried online dating a couple times last year. I first re-tried using eHarmony. I went on a few dates with some guys, but really didn't feel a connection and didn't pursue anything. I was pretty discouraged after my second stint of online dating with eHarmony and gave up for a few months because it was not worth the heartache and disappointment. Note to people on online dating profiles, be honest about yourself in your profile, don't hide it. I went on a date with a guy who said that he was 5'10" in his profile, I showed up for the date and he was barely taller than me, I'm 5'5"... I became motivated to re-try online dating, but this time on Match, after my friend Gretchen visited me in October. She was so enamored with her boyfriend and I decided that I wanted that again. After she left, I set up my online profile on Match. After getting some interesting (to say the least) contacts, I was e-mailed by an awesome guy named Erich :). We e-mailed and started texting pretty frequently for a week before meeting up. Needless to say, we've been pretty much inseparable almost two months later. It's so refreshing to meet someone that you are completely compatible on pretty much every single level of our relationship. We just got back to Colorado from a road trip from Minnesota. He had driven back home to Michigan for Christmas and made a 500 mile detour on the way back to Minnesota to pick me up, meet my family, and drive back to CO. The road trip brought us closer together and made our relationship stronger. Needless to say, I'll be keeping him around for a long time! :D
8) Having more of a love relationship with science. Me and science have a love-hate relationship. Ever since August 2011, when we had to retract the grant based on my thesis project that I almost wore myself out from, I have a six month hate relationship with science. It happened in February and August of this year. Experiments and grants were once again not working as planned. It seemed that everything was failing at the same time when I needed things to be working for committee meetings, data for grants, or department seminars. I realized that I needed to take every negative experience in science and turn it into a positive. Every failed experiment is a lesson in patience and troubleshooting. Academically, 2012 was a very good year for my thesis work. I had two manuscripts accepted and published! My goal is to focus on getting my PhD in 1.5-2 years. I have a fellowship through the Cancer Research Institute that is up in August 2014. I am hoping to get at least two more data papers from my thesis work and hopefully 1-2 reviews. The experiments that I am working on right now are showing some great promise and I am excited to keep working on them!
As 2012 comes to a close and 2013 begins, I resolve to keep myself on this positive journey in my life. I am going to continue my goals from the previous year and keep making myself a better person. My goal for 2013 is to become 100% completely content with my life and hopefully making that impact on someone else's life as well.
Best wishes for a prosperous and happy 2013!
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