Happy 2012 to Everyone!

The beginning of 2011 made me extremely unhappy because I was trying to do what everyone else my age was doing: moving closer to family, buying a house, and setting down roots.  I was also away from my husband for the most terrible five months of my entire life. While I value family and closeness extremely highly (like most immigrants), I realized through everything that happened this year that I am not a person who will be content to do what everyone else is doing.  In fact, it made me miserable.  I don’t know if it came across in my posts, but I couldn’t bring myself to write anything genuinely funny for a long time.

2011 was the year of the rabbit, and it was supposedly a calm year, a year to catch your breath.  For me, the year of the rabbit brought different characteristics: being frightened of everything that comes along, being indecisive, and trembling at anything that moves.  By July, I was questioning everything: our house, my career, and my life choices in general.

However, bit by bit, by myself and with the help of Mr. B, I clambered out of the rabbit hole, so to speak, and realized what I needed to get back on track.  I switched graduate programs for an MBA, I switched jobs for one that’s really exciting and that I love right now, and I made traveling and being with friends and meeting new, interesting people that challenge my world views a priority.

Happiness is such a Western term and so relative and so stupid, because as soon as we realize we’re happy, we need something else to be happy. But, as we speak, I am still on a Scotland high, all of my family is healthy (knock on wood), AND I get to wake up next to someone who understands me completely and STILL somehow loves me. Fortuna’s wheel is on the upswing.

I am especially excited since 2012 is a dragon year. A dragon is an animal who’s not afraid of life, who charges and roars at problems, and in Chinese culture, is wise and benevolent.   That’s what I hope my dragon year will be, and that’s what I wish for you as well this year: aside from good health for you and your loved ones, I wish for you happiness and no doubts in your personal life.  If you are unhappy or uncertain of something, the dragon year is the year to take charge and change whatever you are in control of changing, even if it’s just your outlook.  I wish you happiness and success, love and hope, hope that if something is wrong in your life, that it will turn around, with a little bit of elbow grease.

Thanks so much for reading my blog and for enriching my life. Stick around. 2012 is going to be great.  Except for the following picture.