Looking Back on 2011

2011 was a crazy year for me. It was a year full of change. This year I:

  • Started dating my beautiful girlfriend

  • Watched the last launch of Space Shuttle Discovery from the NASA press site thanks to the STS-133 NASATweetup

  • Took a great vacation to Charleston, SC

  • Turned 30

  • Moved 2200 miles from the East Coast to the West Coast for a new job

  • Began working a dream job in the space industry

There were some low points in 2011, but overall, it’s been a good year. In a lot of ways, I feel like 2011 was a transitional year. All of the change is mostly finished at this point, so it feels like it’s time for the good stuff to begin. I’m really excited about 2012 – I think like it’s going to be an amazing year.

Blog Block

I really thought I’d have a lot to blog about since this whole week was a
pretty crazy cross country adventure…but I can’t seem to focus on blogging
at the moment.  I don’t know if it’s just a writer’s block thing or what.
Whenever I sit down to write, I keep thinking I’m writing out some formal
document and that ends up causing me to keep thinking about it and then I just
stop.  My goal is to blog more now that I’m out in LA and I have lots of
friends around the country that will probably be interested in updates.  At
this point, I’m not sure what I’m going to do.  I thought about just using
Tumblr instead of my own custom WordPress install or I may simply start fresh
with this domain.  I’ll definitely find a way to send out updates on my LA
adventure, but it looks like it’ll be a little bit longer.

One quick update though – I did make it to LA just fine and both kitties made
it smoothly.  My furniture isn’t here yet, so my apartment is basically empty
at the moment, but at least I’m here.  I’ll post more in the near future, but
so far, so good.

T-0

Today is my last day of work on the East Coast. It’s a sad day since I’m
leaving a stable company full of good people and interesting opportunities. At
the same time, it’s an exciting day since I’m leaving so I can prepare myself
for the 2200 mile move to Los Angeles before I start my dream job of building
spaceships. I never thought I’d be trading my reasonably large house in
Tennessee and basically all of my stuff for a tiny one bedroom apartment in
LA, but I never thought I’d be able to work on spaceships either.

I got a great send off from my coworkers. A few of them decided to do a little
decorating to my cube…

…and my car…

…but the best part was the cupcake. 🙂