big plans

i spent a good part of the day today filling in important dates and reminders in my new 2010 planner. i don't think i've ever bothered to put this much effort into planning out a new year... but i'm feeling very excited about this one. (probably in large part because a significant portion of this current year just pisses me off... so it's exciting to kick it goodbye and start fresh - finally!)

on one hand it's bizarre to think that a decade is going to be finished and over with on Thursday night - not just a year, but a whole decade - the first decade of the millennium in fact! it's even weirder to think about what was happening in my life a decade ago. On the verge of the end of 1999, i was working a low paying, substitute page job at the local library - which was nice and low key, and always interesting... but i recall thinking often that i did NOT want to be stuck doing that job for the rest of my life (like a lot of the older ladies i saw there, who had been there for AGES, and still had practically the same job I had, and i had only just recently turned 21... i was SUPPOSED to have a crappy job)... i finished my first post-high school degree in June of 2000, which was an associates degree in arts and sciences (mostly arts... and just the bare minimum of sciences because they required it)...

In the past decade, i've had 3 graduations! the associates degree, a double bachelors degree in fine art: painting, and another in art history from the UW... and finally a masters degree in teaching from UPS. it's funny to think that 10 years later, i'm still finding a way to become a student. it doesn't feel like 10 years of education... but i suppose mostly it was. nearly half of that time was spent at the UW (and i loved it. i loved devoting most of my waking time to painting and learning about historical artists... what a fantastic time in my life!)... just over a year of it was spent at UPS... and the past 3 i've spent teaching art. not too shabby for the professional portion of my last decade huh?

And what about travel? the Double 0's have really been a decade for travel for me! i took my first (and longest) international trip in 2003, when i spent a quarter studying art history abroad in Rome! Having learned my lesson about travel by this time, i didn't just go to Rome and come straight back home. I spent as much time as possible traveling all over the place, seeing the things that I MOST wanted to see while in Europe. I even spent a couple of years preparing for the language. I did 4 quarters of Italian before even bothering to apply (though it was not a requirement). During that trip, I went to 7 countries, including Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, German, and England. Having acquired a taste for travel, I spent the following spring break in Mexico enjoying the beaches of Cancun... and then that was it for a while. The next big international trip was to Jamaica for my honeymoon a couple of years ago. Then for spring break this past year Mike and I went to Korea and Japan to visit a couple of friends of mine. I've wanted to visit Japan for ages, and I have to say it was every bit as cool as I had hoped it would be. Counting several trips I've taken to Canada over the past decade, that makes 13 countries I've visited outside of the US in the last decade! I doubt I'll beat that in the 2010's, but it would sure be fun to try to come close! I would love to go to Egypt. Mike has promised me that when we get rid of our last bit of credit card debt, we can go to Egypt. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later - I'm dying to go see the pyramids!

Back to my plans so far for 2010, I've got all of the birthdays and anniversaries plugged in, upcoming show dates for Morpheus, my Film Noir & Pinot Noir nite on the 15th... and (my favorite of the moment), 6 weeks of yoga all planned out! That together with my regular weight watchers meetings on Tuesday nights, and I've just made real plans to make like 3 of my resolutions a big success right off the bat in 2010! I'm also dragging the new planner with me over to Hillary's house tomorrow night for wine & a movie night - but just as importantly, we're going to plan some art happenings for the new year... and i think right this second i'm going to log off and go check out that Drawing meetup, so i can plan a few dates in the new year to go draw w/ a live model. it'll be good to make regular dates to use my cool new sketchbook.