Two Years Ago/One Year Ago

I was inspired by the blog post of a fellow member of AgentQuery Connect*, in which she reflects on how her life was one year ago at this time.  When I thought of my own trajectory from last year to now, and to a greater extent from two years ago to now, I freaked a little.  The old adage holds: fiction has to pass tests of believability that real life would undoubtedly fail.  The past two years of my life have been unbelievable.  Let's take a trip back in time, shall we?  (Side note: does the time travel aspect now make this blog "paranormal"?)

Two years ago I was coming off of one of the worst school years (09-10) of my life.  I had terrible chemistry with the kids in my classes, I was in conflict with one of my coworkers, and I had to take a break in the middle of all of that to have sinus surgery.  Ugh.  That spring was so bad that I decided to scale back to part-time for the next school year to recover.  I also had some seriously depressing family problems that I don't want to air out on the internet.  Put it all together and I was one sad girl.

But that summer was when things started to turn around.  I decided to buck up and start seeing a therapist.  My husband and I started working out and I lost weight.  That fall I went back to school with renewed vigor and had one of the best school years of my life.  My students were darling, and I won a scholarship to study for a month in Madrid.

Which brings us to one year ago.  One year ago today I was in Madrid.  I had made a couple of friends, I was already sick to death of ham (madrileños eat SO much ham), and I had done something I never thought I could do in a million years.  I had flown across an ocean to spend a month farther from home than I've ever been, all by myself.  I had never even been abroad before, and then there I was, living my dream of standing in front of the painting Las meninas in the Prado.  Holy crap.

The decision to make that trip, and then actually going through with it, showed me that for a long time I was living in fear.  But when I broke out of my comfort zone and did something scary I could learn from it.  So I didn't want to live hiding under a rock anymore.  I wanted to do more impossible things.  And I did.  I left my comfortable teaching job to go back to school.  I wrote a novel.  I signed with an agent.

Next year I'll go back to teaching part-time, fulfilling yet another life-long dream: teaching literature.  I'll keep writing and my first novel will go on submission.

Who knows where I'll be this time next year?

*Hey, I actually remembered to post a link!