High highs and low lows: 2012

When, in January of this year, I decided not to renew my contract at the Louisville Collegiate School where I had been teaching for six years, I never imagined that the leap I was taking would propel me this far.

I never imagined that starting in the fall, I would wake up in the morning, throw on some clothes, – jeans are work clothes for the first time in a dozen years! –  get in my car, drive to Nulu, go to an office where I have a big fancy desk, and spend my work day being paid to write about all of the amazing things that are happening in Louisville.

520 East Brands Holiday Lunch

I never imagined I would work for people and for a company that values me and my voice. I never imagined that my bosses would praise my work on a near-daily basis (or that I would butt heads with them, uglylike, on occasion). Or that I would be paid to tweet on behalf of local businesses that I love.

I never imagined that my blogging and Tweeting habits (or addictions) would be what eventually earned me a living.

I never imagined that clients would seek me out. That I would be, at one point, so overloaded that I had to turn down work.

I thought that I would end up working for The Man, at least for a little while until I could distinguish myself and work my way up some ladder or another. I thought I would end up on the payroll of Brown-Forman or Humana or YUM!, towing a corporate line. Nothing wrong with that, of course. And I wouldn't turn down that opportunity, even now, necessarily.

2012 has been a year of high highs and low lows.

At the turn of the new year last year, I never would have imagined that as I approached 2013 I would be in Love with a capital "L." It's an amazing feeling. I kind of forgot how great it was.

I never imagined that my friend stable would double in size.  That I would know so many of my Twitter friends personally.  That the world will at the same time become bigger and smaller to me in this way.

I never thought I could be this happy professionally. Personally.

My grandmother

I also never anticipated being this sad.

I never imagined that I would face 2013 without my favorite person in the world, my grandmother, Vange.

I still have so much work to do to balance out my personal life and my professional life. I have so much to do to become the person that I want to be in 2013.

But I am so lucky to have so many amazing people rooting for me. I'm so lucky that when I wake up in the morning and crankily scrape the frost from my car windows, I am going to a job I love at a business I believe in.

I get to cheerlead for Louisville for a living. There's no job better suited to me than that.