Belated

On March 11, I had a birthday. It wasn't terribly exciting: Work (and a deadline day), driving to Dallas, Dan gets off work late, he got me flowers, I got stuck in a motherfucker of a traffic jam on the way home and had to detour all over the damn place to get home.

I also, I'll admit, had a minor breakdown. It wasn't anything in particular--I actually was fine until I got stuck in Dallas on the highway without moving anywhere for a half hour (at 10:30 p.m., no less). Then I started getting all overwrought and thinking how boring I was/my life is/etc.

To make myself feel better, I thought back to everything I'd done over the past year. I'm actually pretty satisfied with the year, because I feel like I survived with some gusto. Within the past year I've joined Twitter, so I can waste more time; financially survived three rounds of furloughs; saw my family home in northern Virginia, outside D.C., get moved to North Texas; saw George W. Bush in person (so he wasn't some front cooked up by Cheney and Rove after all!); took a solo trip to Albuquerque; started and abandoned a few side projects; started and finished a fairly crappy novel in 30 days; saw my boyfriend on Christmas Eve; saw a lot of snow; saw Eddie Izzard; and made plans for 2010, including two trips to states and cities I've never visited before.

It does make me feel OK, the past year. It's just this upcoming year that seems daunting. I didn't get this uneasy feeling when the new year started on Jan. 1, but I'm getting it now, instead. When I was in school, my years, the way I kept track of them in my head, all started in August. Now they start with my birthday. Maybe one day I'll use January as a starting period?