Four Years of Life

Today marks four years of blogging here at Life: The Ongoing Education, and it has been quite a ride. Given that this was always a "life blog," meaning that its focus was primarily on my life (personal, professional, etc.), the four years of the blog chronicle four years of changes for me. Four years that saw me from who I was to who I am. So forgive me if I take a moment to ponder some of those changes.

When I started this blog, I was myself, completely, blogging under my real name. I looked roughly like this:

June 20, 2006

I was 24 years old and just starting back to graduate school, to get my teaching credential and a Master's in Education. And I was in love with J.:


We lived together in a gorgeous condo that we'd shopped for together and decorated together and made into a home. Our home. Our first home.

And then things changed, we broke up, and I moved out. I also went a little crazy with a "Supersize Me!" case of depression. Long-time readers might remember this saga. It was ugly. I was not quite as ugly, but obviously not very happy:

January 14, 2007

But then a met a new boy - Aussie Boy. And Aussie Boy was a great find to be my first dating experience after the engagement break-up. We both knew he was in the country temporarily, so there were no expectations that it would be long-term. We just had fun and enjoyed each other's company:

May 31, 2007

And I kept going with the grad school, in spite of how hard it was, and eventually I successfully graduated, much to my own surprise:

June 17, 2007

I started dating a new boy, nicknamed here on the blog, appropriately, New Boy (he's in the green on the left):

August 19, 2007

I got a job working at a preschool where everything was obsessively arranged in size order ALL THE TIME:

August 23, 2007

New Boy and I stopped dating, which is my nice way of saying he dumped me, but I celebrated one year of not cutting myself, and began to realize that maybe I was actually sort of happy with my life despite being dumped:

November 7, 2007

I was not, however, happy with my job, so I quit that job (amicably, but happily) and got a new position as a nanny with people who were very paranoid and wouldn't let me ever talk about or show pictures of anything related to that job.

*Insert lack of image here.*

And I started dating a gorgeous boy who decided he wanted to be known as Batman on the blog, and I began to feel insecure about how I would compare when we went out together what with him being so gorgeous and all:

May 26, 2008

Neither the job nor the relationship with Batman lasted, but while they did last, I was pretty happy:

June 15, 2008

I got a job as a teacher at Christian School, moved to a new home, closer to my new job, and started taking pictures of my work clothes every day:

August 18, 2008

Since then, there has been no more dating - no more boys since Batman. In fact, there's been pretty much nothing but work since then. But still, I've stayed mostly happy:

November 27, 2008

December 23, 2008

June 18, 2009

October 11, 2009

April 29, 2010

May 1, 2010

And silly - let's not forget silly:

May 15, 2010

It's hard for me to believe how much has changed since I first created this little space for myself four years ago. I'm 28 years old now, and moving into my first solo apartment, and I'm still mostly happy.

And that's a great, great thing.

June 26, 2010