Yeah, yeah, I know everyone else is doing it, but I’m home, sick, and bored on New Year’s Day and it’s a new decade, so let’s look back at the last.
I started 2000 in Seattle, visiting for the holiday and to find a place to live, as I was moving back there after a year in “exile” in Los Angeles. Technically at the beginning of 2000 I was a California resident but I’d already given notice on my apartment in LA, planned the move, and had my transfer approved for work, so it was really just a formality at that point. Not much else about the year stands out in my memory till the end, when my friend Betsy and I did a 2-week trip to Thailand. Wonderful place, and somewhere I’d definitely like to go back to now, as my good memories are tinged with the small pains of being an extremely overweight American (as I was then) in a country of teeny tiny people.
Of course, everyone’s memories of 2001 start and end with 9/11, but mine also included an earthquake, quitting a job for another that seemed to offer better opportunity, and being laid off from that one about 3-4 months later (and, truth be told, I was fairly miserable there). So on 9/11, I wasn’t working, I woke up late (probably between 8 and 9) and flipped on the Today show, as was my normal ritual back then … to find out that the world had changed (but that perhaps it really hasn’t needed to … interesting opinion piece I just read on the topic here).
By 2002 I was finally employed again, and the summer’s great memory is of a trip to Tuscany with friends, where we rented a 15th-Century villa and ate great food and drank much wine and made great memories. I haven’t been back to Italy since, but I really should get my butt over there sooner than later. Hell, I haven’t been to Europe at all since then and I really do need to make a trip to the Continent.
2003 started badly but was also a true watershed year for me in many ways. Over MLK weekend one of my dear friends from college took his own life. Not immediately but soon after it was a wakeup call to me that my own sadness could head that way easily if I didn’t do something to make my life what I wanted it to be. In February I started a weight-loss program that ultimately led me to lose 125ish lbs (some of which I put back on prior to this year, but most of that gain has come back off this year … for good, I hope). In September I was walking to lunch with a coworker and was hit by a car, in the crosswalk, with the light … and spent six days in the local trauma center because of it.
In 2004 I finished up the initial rehab for my accident, and though everything else had improved, my left shoulder was still wonky, and I ended up having surgery on it in April. A couple months of rehab later and I was cleared in July. In August I got the wild hare to go make a skydive; I don’t think I told anyone i was going to do it, I just signed up on a Monday and jumped at the next available chance – that Saturday. I don’t think I quite had a clue how much that would change my life. At the end of ’04 I spent three wonderful weeks in New Zealand, truly the trip of a lifetime, and seriously entertained the idea of moving there (though I didn’t ultimately do much about it).
2005 began my life of skydiving adventures. I finished up the A license, despite all predictions that I’d probably never get there. I took the settlement money from the aforementioned accident, quit my job and decided to play for a while. I did a month-long road trip through Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, winding up in Idaho where I met Wendy for a 5-day rafting trip along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. That was also the year I met Sean, and we all know how well that’s turned out. 
In 2006 all I really remember is wanting to be home a lot more. I had a job that had me on the road more often than not, mostly to the east coast (first Boston, then Toronto, and Atlanta) and finally on the west coast in Southern California. I didn’t know what I really wanted to do but I knew I wanted out of that lifestyle.
I got that opportunity in 2007, when a job came up with a start-up in Seattle. While it was stressful, it was also (mostly) local, and I began to find some semblance of balance in my life. For the first time in a long time, I enjoyed what I did professionally. Alas, that was not to last, and I found myself laid off early the next year. Towards the end of the year we lost 10 local jumpers in a plane crash, and soon after that, Franklin and Daisy brought some warmth and kitty cuddles to my life.
So 2008 started off well but I soon found myself at a crossroads. Laid off (didn’t see it coming but in retrospect, many of the signs were right there), and not as happy in Seattle as I had been; but also saddled with the intertia that prevents making change (sell my house? pack my stuff up? Aaack! That’s a lot of effort and stress!). But I somehow managed to overcome that inertia, and the fact that my job offer came with a moving package helped with some of that stress.
Still, the stress wasn’t entirely relieved till the beginning of 2009, when, after 5 months, I was able to sell my house in Seattle, and relax the financial strain of carrying both a mortgage and a rent payment. Despite barely being able to afford it, I started personal training with Noah in January, and it’s been one of the best investments I’ve ever made, hands down, since it is 100% an investment in myself.