Thankful, I am.

I was grumbling earlier today about a standing meeting my 9-to-5 has every Monday at 8:30 a.m. The meeting is always informative and interesting, to be fair, but it's so early! And then I realized that was really the only gripe I had about my 9-to-5. Of course that mad me realize what a non-gripe that was and I further reflected on just how thankful I am for how the last year went. I won't lie and say it was an easy year—for a large amount of time I was under enormous stress—but without this year I wouldn't be where I am now; happy, supported and feeling fulfilled.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to GalPal, who stuck by me even through periods of me being nigh intolerable. And I owe thanks to co-workers both past and present, because it was only because of the teams of people I worked with that I was able to accomplish great things, deliver some amazing work, and travel down the path that eventually brought me to where I am now.

It's been a wild ride in a year that seemed to last a decade—at times stretching on into forever with not nearly enough time to accomplish everything I needed or wanted to—but it's all accumulated into a collection of moments whose result is my own inner happiness.