02 29 00

leap

I woke up today a bit earlier than usual. It might have had something to do with the fact that I had to pee something awful, and that there was a cat sitting on my head.

Today was one of those mornings that screams Spring is coming! There's something very solemn and hopeful in the air on mornings like this. Sunlight streams through bare branches, and the air is warm with just a slight bite of chill in the wind. The actual quality of the light seems different as well; it's more diffuse and not quite as glaring as the light later in the day.

When I got dressed, I realized that my watch thought it was March 1.

I took another walk in the park near my house, enjoying the sun's warmth and the breeze. I started thinking about the fact it was a Leap Year, something that only happens once every four years. Forget New Year's... Leap Day is a doorway to the new for me.

Four years ago today I was living on my own in a basement apartment. The ceiling leaked and the shower leaked. When it rained, I got an inch of water on my floor. I was living with mutant spiders and a severe lack of furniture. The girls upstairs hated me and I hated them.

I was a supervisor at work and in college. I was one year away from graduation. I had a good number of friends, and I had discovered the Internet. I did not have a computer. My first forays into the e-world were through Telnet talkers and email.

I had finally gotten rid of Duncan, and Scott and I were just starting to make eyes at each other.

I was depressed. I had friends, but no one wanted to visit me in my dungeon. I was poor; I was eating pasta every night and was too proud to walk the four blocks to my parents' house to ask for food or money. I contemplated suicide on a few, dark, lonely nights. My best friend gave me a jade plant, and I showered the little thing with love and attention. Frisby was a life saver in those dark times.

I had just been given my first car, an old, battered, rusty 1985 Tercel with no radio and a leaky gas tank. Auto insurance sent me into price shock.

I was full of hope for the future. I had dreams of graduating and settling down in a nice apartment with windows that actually looked out on trees instead of dirty window wells. I would get a real job, a full time job that I loved... A career. I planned to pay off my school loans and buy a real car. I wanted to meet that someone special, the someone that I knew was out there, somewhere. The someone who would fill the void in my heart.

It's now four years later.

I am living on my own again. I have moved twice since the basement; once into a two-bedroom with a psycho chick that I thought was my friend, and again into this apartment. I have plenty of furniture. I have too much stuff, actually. My windows look out on a pine tree and the sky. My only real complaint about the apartment is a bathtub that won't drain fast enough.

I sold the battered Tercel and bought a Saturn. Not exactly my dream car, but a huge step up from a beater with holes in the floor and no heat.

I have graduated from college with a 3.00001 GPA. My dreams of a career are all but gone; geology just doesn't interest me like it used to. I have changed jobs three times, going to County Paratransit as a driver, to FarAwayEvilCompany as a dispatcher and (later) as a scheduler, and then back to County Paratransit as a dispatcher. I am in terrible amounts of debt, between my school loans and car loan and credit card.

I have become Internet savvy. I have a computer. Frisby is dead, but now I have a cat. The jade plant is still alive.

I found Dave. Or he found me. It doesn't matter which.

Where will I be in four years from now?

The way things are looking now, I hope to be living in Canada with Dave. Married. I would like to complete a network administration certification and settle into an honest-to-god career. I would like to have something published in a paying market; whether that's a short story or a novel remains to be seen.

I don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck. I want to be well on my way to paying off my debts; in four years the car should be paid off, and my school loan should be half-way paid - although I would like to be further along in the payments than that.

I have a history of bouncing back from whatever life has thrown at me. Whatever the future brings, I'm sure I'll take it in stride. Whether my current dreams are fulfilled or new ones have taken their place, I'm looking forward to it.

Bring it on.

Looking Back

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