Happy Denversary to me!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines! Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover!” -Mark Twain

Thirteen years ago, I arrived in Denver, CO to start anew.

All my other Denversary celebrations are cataloged on my personal Facenuts.

Which is fine.

It feels weird to have so much of myself chronicled on Facenuts. Plenty of it performative, but it’s still my voice and humor and I hope to continue to find and use my voice here, even if no one is reading LOL echo echo echoooooo.

This Denversary celebration is especially wild b/c 13 is a big number! My life here is a teenager now HAHAHAHA. No, truly, I am laughing.

This year feels different and special for several reasons.

One, the ‘demic is subsiding, slowly but surely, and that’s worth noting and celebrating. 🥳

Next, due to the ‘demic, and a truly forced distance from, well, much of everything, I feel a sense of closure in some ways. Like, plenty of things are now in a memory box instead of the forefront of my mind. I traveled back east to my home state a lot for events and visits, for happy reasons and for awful reasons. That was a lot of vacation time that wasn’t spent actually vacationing, i.e. beach. And, it’s ok to see that now! It’s what I needed at the time. I don’t regret it. I’m lucky to have folks who want to see me, that I have had the means (mostly….) to travel like that. But now that priorities have shifted, I am unsure when I’ll travel to my hometown. More importantly, I am not going to stoke relationships that do not serve me and who I want to be. I did plenty of that (believe it or not!) and it’s tiring, and it came at sacrifice of self. I had a lot of guilt leaving Connecticut, a lot of guilt being far away when shit was going down, and that’s all mad real, and yet not fair to me. With this 13-er here, I can’t wait to re-read this post on my 14-er.

Finally, 2020 was so different and wild, and 2021 has already proved itself to be the same. My spouse and I have embarked on new career ventures, he with a promotion and me with my own projects. I’m inching along on my consulting business, realizing this morning what contract templates I need to have at the ready, making tweaks on that squarespace website as well www.jacwest.consulting heyyyyyy

THIRTEEN YEARS! The “what ifs” still loop in my mind. Life is indeed full of thousands of untraveled paths, which is such a fucking relief. Colorado has only gotten cooler to live in, and I’m so glad I made the trek to be here.