A New Year

It is often believed that the turn of the year is the start of a new chapter, as if the events of our lives synched up with the calendar to bookmark time. Throughout most of my life this notion has been lost on me, but this time things have changed.
Through the awkward mixture of purpose and chance that characterizes life, major events stumbled upon each other this December to collectively signify, not only great emotional heights, but also necessary upcoming challenges.

It is with this taste that the year’s final countdown on a cold Rotterdam night left me. As I chanted the numbers down in my broken-down Dutch, I reaffirmed what this New Year should mean to me: become useful (find work/a job), integrate better in the culture where I am residing in (right now meaning: learn Dutch) and celebrate the beauty of being married to the love of my life (no translation needed).

These three elements intertwine to the firm, yet cliché, New Year’s resolution of being more proactive. And while few people can call getting a Masters Degree and getting married in the same month the work of a slob, I find myself now with the (personally) monumental task of taking bolder steps to guiding my life, beside my wife, to that yet to be defined place where we instinctively know we want to go… doing work that is socially responsible and relevant, having fun doing it and achieving some level of financial tranquility (the things that set us out on our quest away from our home).

This is why we sill start this new medium, as a (admittedly flawed) record of our actions from our newly contracted promises. This blog is meant to both register progress and be a channel for expressing ideas. At the same time, hopefully it will build inside of us enough pressure to actually do the things we discuss over dinner, instead of letting them be empty words over Euroshopper pasta.

So with this post, we (both Meli and I) mean to symbolize the first step to professional and personal proactivity, beyond the online job searches and daily chores that have become our only habits (since we stopped with that whole planning a wedding on a budget stuff).

With that said, let it be a great 2010