Looking Back, Looking Forward

Week 9

It's New Year's Eve, and as we count down to the beginning of 2014, it is interesting to reflect on where I was a year ago, compared to where I am now.

One year ago, I was about three months out of a three year relationship. I was enjoying the new freedom of being single, or at least it was certainly keeping me busy. I was working for a car dealership and making pretty good money. The best money I'd ever made. I was still lamenting the lack of community in Connecticut, having moved down here about 15 months ago and still not knowing many people or finding much to do.

You see, back when I was in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, I had been in a fantastic and vibrant community that I had been instrumental in building. I had run a game store called Phoenix Games, which had developed a tremendously robust community. From it spawned a few things including a Rocky Horror Picture Show cast and a sci fi convention called Pi-Con, of which I believe that both survive to this day.

Then, in 2011, I moved to Connecticut believing it would lead to better professional opportunity. It turned ou I was right... but my time scale was a bit off.

If you had told me then that I would close out 2013 engaged with solid plans to marry (been engaged twice before), with a baby on the way, driving a brand new car, LocSec (president) of the local chapter of Mensa, and about to start a well paying job as a manager of a game store, I would have been skeptical.

I don't say that I wouldn't believe you. I have seen enough dramatic and unexpected changes in my life that I am no longer ever completely surprised, but that's a whole lot of changes, all good, in one year.

When facing a lot of change, some people get nervous. I do not. This is one of the benefits of faith. While I have always believed in God, my faith took a step up in September of 2012, when I started taking it more seriously. I said trying to be the master of my own destiny wasn't getting me where I wanted to. Perhaps I should trust that to the higher power. That is when things started to turn up.

So, as I rocket through dramatic and fantastic change in my life, I do so with excitement and enthusiasm. I have a wonderful woman by my side, a faithful God has my back, and my eyes look with curiosity and wonder to what the future will hold.