F#*k me!

That's my motto of the moment. What I find myself saying, sometimes more than others, as my life has unraveled, or at least changed, over the past few months. I could make analogies about balls in the air or slippery slopes or unraveling sweaters, but the best framing of it came from Alex who said that my life has diarrhea.

Yes, things are being purged and changed, and when I'm not figuring something out or avoiding figuring something out, I'm thinking, "F#*k me!".

This blog, too, has been having that effect on me. I'm only slightly surprised to realize that this is my first post of December, with only 7 days left to the month. The last week of the last month of the first (but hopefully not last) year of my blog. Someone reminded me a few months ago that I wrote about it being a year of change. That it certainly has been.

The first change was leaving ETS and going to DLD full-time. Shortly after that happened, I volunteered to serve on the Community Building Committee (CBC) of the larger organization (Educational Outreach). That's been a great experience, both within the committee itself and throughout the larger organization as a sense of community is fostered.

Tangentially through the CBC, I also met my boyfriend, another major change for the year. We met at the Bastille Day Happy Hour outing, to an Irish pub and started dating six weeks later.

Another change was my brother Pete finally moving up to Portland after years of talking about moving to the Pacific Northwest. Sadly, it was a short-lived change with his return to Texas at the end of June (yeah, moving to the Pacific Northwest in the middle of winter and to Texas in the middle of summer lacks certain qualities I'd prefer to see from my blood relations!).

Then there was my car dying (and, no, I've still not replaced it) and my brief foray into the idea of buying my own place. Ultimately, the reality of terrible commutes this year and my desire to spend less time sitting while commuting has lead me to get an apartment a couple of miles from where I work, near Green Lake, the most Minneapolis section of Seattle. I'll be moving next month, before the big birthday.

This month, 2 of the 3 employees in my department who were there when I started announced they were leaving. Joan McCarter, aka McJoan, is going to be the primary blogger at dailyKos. I'm thrilled and jealous at the fulltime writing opportunity. Then my boss announced he's taken another position at the University, so my department will be moving under another director. No one is very sure what this means, but it seems like my job is being extended through June at least.

It's a lot of change and none of it is really coming easily. There's that sense of moving through molasses, but this time it isn't an issue of slowness but of difficulty moving. This is partially due to so many little things being harder than they seem like they should be. I'm trying to be Tao about it all, since I have been told that for me, this is a time of letting go. Of course, being the little girl who kept her mother talking in the doorway at bedtime, I'm not very good at letting go. But that is much of what I need to be doing right now.

F#*k me!