2013.. Here we go

2013 has started off on the right foot. I drove back to Cali from AZ on NYE and by the time I got home and unpacked, I didn't have much energy for anything other than watching the festivities on TV and passing out. Sometime later I awoke to screaming and realized it was midnight and a new year had begun.

The next morning as I sat in my apartment in San Diego (all boxes FINALLY unpacked) I felt very nostalgic. All of the cliches ran through my head "you never know where life will lead you!" "Who knows where you'll be a year from now!" "The only sure things in life are death and taxes!" and many, many more. At that moment I finally GOT it. I now understand those cliches. On January 1st, 2012 if you had told me a year from then I'd be living in San Diego (a dream I've had for quite sometime) I would have laughed in your face. I have a house in AZ- mortgage payments and all of the responsibility home ownership brings is not conducive to "relocating for work"; yet- there I sat,  2 blocks from the beach, having only one acquaintance that I knew from my previous job, and completely on my own in San Diego.

Anyone that knows me well understands that change scares the hell out of me. I'm not a big "risk" taker. I like stability, routine, and familiarity. Being born and raised in Arizona makes it home to me. My immediate family lives there, 98% of my friends live there and I have known them all a ridiculously long time, 15+ years in most cases. I was very settled. Even so, I always had the dream of someday living somewhere else.

When I was 22 and a freshly graduated, naive, college student I was looking for jobs in New York. I had applied for a few, started looking for cheap apartments and plotting how I would get there. I had no financial obligations and nothing holding me back. It was right at this time that my mom through a routine colonoscopy was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. This diagnosis brought me back to Earth. I didn't want to be 2000+ miles away from my family. I wanted to be there and spend every second I could with my mom- my best friend and greatest supporter.

Flash forward 4 years to 2011 and my mom is in remission, (Thank you God) I bought a house in Mesa, and I was on a vacation in San Diego with my sister, my brother in law, and our close family friend Angela. I was sitting by the beach with my sister Ashley and I made a bold statement- "I don't care how I do it- I WILL be living here within a year". It was the perfect compromise- somewhere other than Arizona, but close enough to drive home for the weekend or if something came up and I needed to get back quickly- I could. It was on that vacation that I bought a keychain that said "San Diego" this was my visual representation of my goal.

A few months went by and the dream took a backseat to life. Work deadlines, bills, daily demands that so easily put "dreams" in the background. One Sunday I decided to stir up the old San Diego dream after I had seen a friends facebook pictures showing her new apartment on the beach in CA. When I looked at the company where she had been hired, there was an Account Manager position open. I applied and all of the pieces fell perfectly into place to get me here. It almost- as corny as this sounds, feels like it was meant to be.

Life has it's ups and downs. It is frustrating, overwhelming, sad, and happy. One thing I now understand more than anything is that life constantly changes.  Change isn't bad- it's scary and uncertain, but also exciting and new. 2013 represents just that to me- change.

I accomplished my lofty somewhat unrealistic goal, I'm living in San Diego-

 I did it.