popular thinking

THE STATE OF MY UNION

Not finding anything stronger than NyQuil in my medicine cabinet, I remained relatively sober for much of President Bush's State of the Union address. I did have NyQuil, after all. But the speech couldn't have come at a more appropriate time for me to take a state of my union. Has it already been a year since I started work at the Herald? Has it only been a year? For Bush, he had such an awful 2005 (and so did most of us, as a direct or indirect result) that he couldn't help but want to hit the Easy button and start from scratch in 2006. We've all had those kinds of years. For me, Jan. 31, 2005, represented a chance to start over, to be reborn, to begin again in a new town with new co-workers and a new shot at taking control over my own future. And for the most part, I can look back on the past year and think of how much I've accomplished, but not so much that I cannot also look ahead with clear goals to do more. Eight years ago, I sat in a soon-to-shutter newsroom of the Federal Way News, listening to Bill Clinton deliver a State of the Union both ironic and poignant (at least to me and my pink-slipped colleagues) for its calls for full employment. How far have you come since 1998? Just thinking about my own eight-year journey since then...the opportunity to pursue stand-up comedy as a career, a full-time gig at the Space Needle, swing dancing to my heart's content, the willingness for an editor to take a chance on me as an entertainment reporter, meeting someone who made me fall head over heels so far that I couldn't think straight, which led to an elopement and soon thereafter, bitter heartbreak, an ill-fated pursuit into the desert Southwest, which would lead to an even better job at a bigger paper (who'd ever think that my worst personal moments would coincide with my first major metro?), then an even bigger rollercoaster of personal and professional moments that would lead me to the prospect of leaving Phoenix to experience my own mythical reincarnation. And that's just the short story to 2005. This past year, Wow! That's really all I can say about this past year. Someday, perhaps, the full story can be told. And not in a James Frey way, either, although I may need to change some names for their protection. Enough about the past. At least for now. It's time to look forward. I, for one, cannot wait to tackle year two in Boston...