10 years on

First, the Venice report and photos are here and the next two entries (the photos are in the third one.)

Meanwhile, I’ve just realized that I missed my decade blogiversary! I wrote my first entry on March 9, 2001 during a miserable winter in Massachusetts. (Pardon the formatting issues; they happened when I ported entries over from my first ‘home’ at Diaryland to my own site). It isn’t that I don’t like Massachusetts; it’s just that my company at the time said “Hey, wanna go to Boston for a month right after New Years?” and after I said “Sure!” it turned out to be three months in Worcester (Woostah). The company seemed not to understand that being on the other side of the US for three months might screw up people’s lives a bit; I had been training hard at the time and, though that area is rife with rowing normally, I couldn’t get on the water at all because it was all frozen at the time. I had to fight hard to get the company to pay for membership at a gym with a rowing machine. On the other hand, they did send me home (or bring Ted out) every other weekend.

Since I wrote that blog entry I’ve been reunited with Ted and then, years later, separated for an even longer period; lost two cats; visited three more continents and lived in Europe and Asia; aged visibly; competed in a bunch of regattas including Masters Nationals and World Masters, not to mention some in the Netherlands and Taiwan; lost one close relative and two grandmothers-in-law; worked for two other companies at a total of four sites, strengthened my dependence on the Internet even further, read a whole lot of amazing books, been to the city and back again, been moved by some things that I’ve learned, met a lot of good people and called them friends, felt the change when the season turned.

Sorry, I was channelling Bill Staines there for a moment. But what do you expect from a rower when the song is called ‘River’?

I’ve lived nearly a quarter of my life since beginning this blog, that’s what.It hasn’t been all daisies and butterflies and staggering accomplishment by any means, and there was some pain in there as you might expect over the course of a decade. There were a lot of lucky chances, probably more than our share, though I do think Ted and I did a decent job of seizing them. The one thing I think I can legitimately be proud of is that it’s been a full decade with a lot of living in it.

I don’t know what I’ll be doing for the next decade. There’s someone I’m looking forward to meeting and seeing grow up in it, and there will almost certainly be (yet another) continental move, this time back to the US (however, I first expected that to happen in 2009). I’ll turn fifty somewhere along in there (or if I don’t, bloggng will not be my main concern.) Past that, I can’t predict details. There will be more meeting of interesting people and reading of good books, because there are too many of both in the universe for it not to happen. There will be some sightseeing wherever I am, because there are sights to see anywhere. I don’t expect to change drastically – I think I’m still pretty recognizable as the same person I was at age nine, with most of the same opinions on the broadest topics – but I hope I’ll grow and deepen and become more interesting.

One final note: sine LiveJournal has been stuttering lately, I should note for those who read it there that this web journal can also be read at Dichroic Reflections and DreamWidth.