Goodbye to the Old, Hello to the New

Happy last day of the year and congratulations for surviving the “end of the world”. I took a few weeks off of blogging due to the craziness of the holidays and the whirlwind trip to Washington for Christmas. But I’m back and decided to do a nice little “reflective” post on the year because honestly, there isn’t much else to talk about from the two weeks I was gone. So here’s a quick recap of 2012.

I started 2012 in the middle of a freak out. I was entering my last semester as an undergraduate student and when I left WT for winter break, I had convinced myself that I needed to stay an extra semester to get my minor. This was mostly due to the thought that I wasn't ready for the "real world" after spending 20 years in school. Thankfully winter break talked me out of that idea, even after my advisor and friends had failed. Just a few weeks into the new year, I landed my USEF internship, which went from three months to six after I decided that graduating in May was for the best. This definitely helped keep my worrying about the future at bay for a while, giving me time to freak about other things (like WT telling me I needed some more things to graduate the day that late registration for classes closed 4 weeks into the semester).

A lot of school things happened during the first half of the year but it was mostly a blur of college and friends that went way too fast (except for February, who knew the shortest month of the year could make itself so long). But I made it through it (mostly) alive and after traveling 5,400 miles in 2 ½ weeks after graduation, I moved to Kentucky after dropping my horse off in Washington.

While I came to Kentucky with one set of goals, they slowly formed to another set. Moving to Kentucky was definitely the best thing I’ve done career-wise as I found opportunities here that I wouldn’t have in any other place. I learned a lot from the USEF and in the fall made my move to the racing industry when I got my first real journalism job at the Paulick Report. Working seven days a week was a bit of an adjustment between PR and the USEF but I survived. During the last month of the year, I was hired as a full time employee at America’s Best Racing doing a job that I am passionate about by promoting horse racing.

There have definitely been some ups-and-downs this year but I can confidently say that it probably tops the list of years in my life. Now it’s off to see if 2013 can do the same.