GoodBye, 2012
 

 We always say it's hard to believe the year is over. It's hard to believe.
The beginning of last year was one of anxiety and anticipation.  Unlike the famous phrase from Forrest Gump's mother, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get"....I did know what I was gonna get. Upcoming lay off.
It wasn't supposed to happen that way. I was supposed to leave my job when I was darn ready to, not the other way around.
The rest of the year was a time of reckoning: I reckon what I'm going to do now?
It was a productive completion of 2012. I was able to take care of a couple business matters, and to become a naturalized citizen. There were over 5,000.00 people in my group, and we were the first of the day. The next group was estimated to be around the same figure. Simply amazing, that there were so many of us. 
We managed to squeeze in a small vacation during the summer, and ended the year with some friends in a rental cabin with unexpected snow in nearby mountains. 
I've stepped through the threshold into the new year, 2013. I regret some things I didn't do, but more than that, I'm grateful that my loved ones and I are still here, that we have plenty of food and roofs over our heads. 
The journey beckons, and I look forward to learning new skills that will help make me more marketable. I look forward to tapping my toe onto the big ice pond of freelance writing, and seeing if it will hold me up, or if I will go crashing through. Regardless, nothing happens by itself. It's true, that saying...."you get out of life what you put into it".