One Word 2013 Reflection

So I thought I had written a “formal” One Word 2013 post that I could link back to, but apparently I did not. I think this was because of all my traveling around New Years last year. I did notice in my post on priorities that I wrote about the amount of Change I would be facing. In reflection, I think Change would have been an accurate word to select for my One Word 2013.

From the beginning, 2013 was an adventure. Within seven days of the beginning of the year, I had been in Portland, Los Angeles, Disneyland, San Francisco, Denver (for a layover, but still!) and Oklahoma City. A few weeks later brought me to a mini-road trip to Tulsa. And so on. With my role in graduate school and my graduate assistantship changing as things began to come to a close, I built new skills and dealt with challenging situations.

They say you have to go through the fire to be refined and the experiences I had during grad school were a very, very hot refining fire in my life. I learned to take my work a lot more seriously than I ever had.

Then a few other things changed – after The Placement Exchange, I decided to make my job search more regional than I had previously imagined or planned. I decided to move to Portland and look for work. This was a huge change, going from Oklahoma to Oregon (with a month-long stop in Seattle in-between), but it has been incredible. I have learned a lot about what is important to me. I love living in this city, and I think moving here has been the best change in my life.