Me - The Year in Review - Part One
2005 was probably the most eventful of my approximately 22 years. I started the year off in a funk, having not done as well as I might have liked in school last fall. I also was dealing with the issues typical of a second-semester college senior. I had senioritis. Most of my friends had already graduated. I felt like I had outgrown college generally and my social scene specifically. I was very eager to graduate in May.
Graduation could not have been better. My family and friends visited from all over the country. It was nice to see everyone in one place. On the other hand, it was sad to leave some friends behind who have not yet graduated. One month later my brother graduated from high school, which gave me another chance to see my family and friends.
The beginning of the summer was simultaneously very stressful and very relaxing. It was nice to have some time off to just relax; but it was also very stressful to have the burden of an uncertain future. The bank account ran dry and I was living off credit cards for a while. I did get a chance to spend some time in Miami with my girlfriend, which was a lovely diversion, but I soon had to return to Virginia. It is during this period of too much downtime that I launched my website.
I had been searching intently for jobs since graduation; but the one branch I hadn’t yet shaken was personal connections. (Which, everyone knows, is the only way anyone gets a job.) To extend my poor metaphor for a moment, that branch contained some of the proverbial low-hanging fruit. A friend of mine was able to quickly introduce me to a friend of hers who got me an interview. Everything went swimmingly and I started my new job as a professional web developer on July 18th.
The next few months went by in a blur; I have found that doing the same thing every day causes this phenomenon. I have been learning some skills on the job; but most of what I do is not very challenging. It is in these first few months of my job that I worked on Diplomacy in my spare time. I eventually got sort of burned out on Diplomacy, and decided I needed to give it a break.
Also during August I was helping my mom and my brother to clean out our house, which we have lived in for thirteen years, so that we could move. Four bedrooms seemed like an awful lot, considering I will be moving out within the next year and my brother will be going away to college next fall. My mom does not need a four bedroom house to herself. We decided to take the opportunity to move downtown to Norfolk, specifically the Ghent area. Ghent is a perfect neighborhood within walking distance of everything in Norfolk worth doing. We have a three story townhouse that is more than spacious enough for the three of us. (The fourth being my best friend, with whom I share a room.)
To be continued… Part Two (Cars, Holidays, Norfolk, and Jobs + Predictions, Resolutions, and Aspirations)
