What a Year

It's performance appraisal time at work, that glorious time of year when I get to attempt to list all my notable accomplishments without sounding either completely lame or completely full of myself. Some days I feel quite accomplished when I come home from work and realize that I haven't yet gone insane from being trapped in a windowless office and staring at words all day. Sometimes those words even make sense at the end of the day. But somehow I don't think that's quite what they're looking for on that list. Yes, I do think I accomplished some good things at work, but I didn't do them by myself, and taking credit for the entire sharing time outline or for getting the new Personal Progress stuff out on time sounds a bit pretentious. (Although just for the record, I had no say over the design of that Personal Progress stuff. Seriously, can you imagine me getting excited about all that frilly pink girliness? I may be turning into a girl, but I haven't gone off to live in Fairy Princess La-La Land.)

Anyway, I'd much rather think of all the other things I accomplished last year, and now that it's past the new year, I can do that. For instance, I survived leaving my baby brother at the MTC six days after my mom had open-heart surgery. That was a big one. I got a new nephew, got a new sister-in-law, finished a 5K without dying, and went surfing behind a boat. OK, those first two things would have happened with or without me, but I really enjoyed them both. I also saw the Cliffs of Moher, walked on the Giant's Causeway, kissed the Blarney Stone, learned to drive on the wrong side of the road, and sang myself hoarse at two U2 shows in Dublin. Yep, it was a pretty great year. I learned a lot, laughed a lot, cried a lot, and enjoyed myself immensely. And just like at work, I couldn't have done any of it on my own—and wouldn't have wanted to even if I could.