Who are you?

You know those days you look in the mirror and realize you haven't seen yourself in weeks? Two-thousand-and-ten was a speeding freight train of revolving weeks of that feeling. Sometimes I was standing on top of the train, wind in my hair, arms out-stretched, thrilling the sky. Other days the train just pulled me along behind, bumping along the railroad ties, usually trying to study while doing so. I didn't really blog as a result, and my life was poorer for it. Let me recap a bit though, going into this New Year. After all, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. ;)

• My sister-in-law Vivers decided to move from Long Beach to Boston in January! We spent five awesome months together watching Friends, wandering Boston, getting lost, looking for work, having long discussions over dinner, and living the life. She moved out to her own place after she found a full-time position (in her desired field nonetheless), but she's close and we're blessed to see her often.
• Anne and I started the domestic adoption process in April. Still finding words to express the joy of being in this process. Anne (she-of-the-golden-tongue) has several powerful posts on this incredible journey here: http://renidemus.blogspot.com/.
• I finished my first year of law school at Boston College Law. I had a blast. It was both harder and easier than I anticipated. I am so glad for the opportunity to be in law school, even in this terrible economy. It's what I am meant to do. and I love doing it.
• I didn't have gainful employment during the school year for the first time since 2003. In retrospect, I would have worked 20hrs/wk. Work + school makes Taylor a better student. I missed working. I missed having something different to turn to during a long day of productivity.
• I made new friends and caught up with so many old friends. Social media is amazing. Those who hate it don't understand it.

I also discovered a lot about myself:

• I love IPAs. especially Imperial IPAs. Stone Brewery helped me fall in love with drinking a pine tree. Somehow they remind me of the whole West Coast. Brewery based in San Diego helping me remember the pine forests of Washington State.
• I miss not playing my cello. seriously. I played for nine years and then left it in the case the last three. Time to change that.
• I love to read and that means I love to write. All kinds of things. I'm good at it too. I never seem to actually do any writing though. I procrastinate on papers, I leave aside blog posts, I only occasionally write a piece of short fiction. Hm.
• I'm not sure I can spend my life working for someone else. I can do it. I like doing it. But it doesn't allow me to create in the same way as starting my own venture. I start things. I begin things. It's what I do naturally and best.

Reading really took a central role in my life this year. I was doing hundreds of pages of it for law school and needed something real to keep my mind going. I subscribed to The Paris Review, One Story, the New Yorker, and Zoetrope. I blazed through The Master and Margarita (which I'm still trying to understand: a beautiful, wild book). I reread many more books as well. I delved deeper into my poetic mainstays: Czeslaw Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, and Jane Hirshfield. It balanced out my law school experience, I'm certain. 

That was 2010. A ramble, and conveyed in the manner I recall it. Here's to the New Year!