Saturday, January 4, 2014

2013 Year in Review

Dressed up for Wedding
Happy New Year!  It is a few days into 2014, and we have all made it through the holidays.  This year in Iowa it has been a cold winter.  Since I have been holding up indoors, I have taken time to reflect about things I have learned about myself in the previous year.  This past year doesn't seem like a spectacular one at first glance.  The day to day of life sometimes  takes the awe out of things.  I am the first to admit I sell myself short on my achievements (something I am working on).  Here are some of my highlights of 2013:

In the spring, I agreed to participate in a dance for an Indian wedding celebration for the gathering of the family and friends the night before the wedding.  Our little group represent the friends of the bride from our area.  We met for weeks to learn choreographed dance routines we performed for the bride and groom to be!  I truly enjoyed spending time with the women I danced with, learning the routines, and being apart of their wedding in a small way.  It was a joyous occasion!

Happy to be done with the Pigman!
I started the summer off with finishing a tremendously windy sprint triathlon.  I completed this triathlon before in agreeable weather conditions.  I am a slow triathlete, so my goal is usually to not drown and just finish.  My goal for the 2013 Pigman Sprint was to finish and beat my time from the previous year, but with the weather conditions my goal changed to being "just to finish!"  I was focused on the bike portion of the triathlon just to keep moving, even when it seemed like the wind was making me go backwards.  I was proud of myself for sticking to it, and finishing before some of my "competition".

Another awesome experience for the year was attending the AIS-DSD conference in Boston, MA.  I wrote up my blog post about attending the conference.  But I cannot express how I benefited from going to the conference, and how it helped build me into a stronger person.  I totally plan on going to the one next year that is going to be in San Francisco and want my mother to go along with me this time.

Some harder lessons were learned when I went on a trip to South and North Dakota and had signed up to do a triathlon on the way to visit the in-laws.  The swim portion was significantly longer than I had done in the past, and after my first triathlon was finished in June, I had not continued with training to prepare myself for this one.  My husband and I arrived to South Dakota and were preparing for it, we arose that morning and as I was surveying the swim portion and surroundings, I backed out of it at the very last second.  The start horn went off and I couldn't get in the water.  I was unprepared and afraid.  It is OK to back out of things, but it's OK to say no earlier than at the starting gate.

Later in the fall, I took the reigns at works while my supervisor was out recovering from surgery.  I attempted to do the best I could being in charge at work.  Until I got sick with a really bad cold!  It's difficult being in charge of housing cancer patients when you are also sick.  You have to take care of yourself, and make sure things are still going on as they should at work- without exposing the patients to your sickness.  I had some excellent coverage with the staff, so I could hide in my office and do administrative things.  Once I lost my voice, I stayed home for a day and a half to rest.  Also, I had to examine my role as a leader at work when one of my volunteers asked me to answer questions for a paper she was writing on leadership.  It turns out, as a self-conscience, over weight, intersexed cancer survivor I had a hard time seeing myself seeking out a leadership position.  As a social worker, I wanted to work with cancer patients and their families- which had led me to where I am today.  But now that I am in my role at work, I truly am loving it as the past couple of years have gone by.

The last major positive step for our family was filling out an adoption registration form.  It is the very beginning phases of a process that can take a couple or few years, but as soon as we me the qualifications of being married for 3 years for domestic infant adoption we sent in the form!  I will use this blog to update on the status of this process as well in its various phases.

2013 was a year full of ups and downs, but this is to be expected.  Overall I am happy with the year gone by and feel blessed for the experiences I had and the people in my life.  I am also working on my dedication to this blog I had started.  It was easy to talk about the story of my past, but once I got passed that it was difficult to continue with topics and formatting.  So, I will continue with writing and see where it takes me.  It will be a mixture of  things about my life as I move forward with it.
all Smiles in North Dakota!