Looking back, looking ahead
2008 was a rather up-and-down year.
The low points: Jeff injured his leg on our vacation in Cancun, and subsequently spent a week in the hospital (back here in Chandler) when his leg became seriously infected. Then he got laid off, found a job, left the job after it turned out to be the job from hell, and now he's looking again.
The high points: Otherwise, the vacation to Cancun was pretty good. My organization at work won the Intel Quality Award, and I was on the team that prepared and presented the award (great exposure to the department head!). I went to three really great concerts: Return to Forever (70s fusion superband on a reunion tour), Steely Dan, and David Sanborn.
The election was both a high and a low point. Obama winning was a high point, the three marriage amendments passing was a devastating low point. I got really wrapped up in the election (both the presidential election and the ballot issues) - it was hard not to. It almost became an obsession, and when the marriage amendments passed, I became depressed for several weeks.
After serving for three years as national president of IGLOBE (Intel's GLBT employee group), and being in some leadership role for almost all of the 12.5 years I've been in the group, I decided that in 2009 I am going to step back from all that and just be a rank-and-file member. I have also had enough with the whole "diversity" thing at Intel and the way it is being mismanaged. So I'm taking a break from all of that for at least a year.
Likewise, I'm going to step away from any sort of GLBT activism or political involvement in 2009. I need to recover emotionally and find some new things to focus on. Here's one:
After a 13-year hiatus, I am going to dust off my trombone (literally - it's been up in the attic for almost three years) and join the gay band in Phoenix, now that we have one again. At least I'm going to see what it's like. If it really sucks or I don't really enjoy the people, I'll drop it, but I at least want to give it a try. While I can't get too excited about the typical repertoire of concert bands (been there, done that for many years), at least it will get me playing again and I can see where that goes - hopefully into some sort of jazz group.
Other than that, I will keep my mind open, think, and see what else interests me.
And I really need to start eating better, get more exercise, and drop about 20 pounds. I just had a health and wellness checkup at work, and my cholesterol, triglycerides, and body fat % are a little high and need to come down.
My other big goal for 2009 is to go through everything I own and shed a lot of the crap that I really no longer need. I'm already selling CDs on Amazon, and I need to unload some books as well. There's lots of other stuff that is still in boxes from when we moved into this house almost three years ago. I want my life to be simpler.