Breathe

I did it! I'm alive! I turned in my last paper today. At 35 pages (okay, really only 25 if you don't count appendices and references), I was glad to have it off my hands. It's hard to believe that I'm done with my first year! It seems like it's gone by so quickly, but I also feel like I've been in RI for ages.

I've been so grateful for this twist in my path, and grateful also to discover which parts of me b e n d and which parts are pretty solid-- Traits I can rely on to deal with the ebb and flow of life. Not that I'm not grateful for the bendy parts too, since that's how I get to ride the waves!

1. Rachel, 2. Apples and Peanut Butter, 3. Summer greens in the Duffey lake landscape near Lillooet in beautiful British Columbia, 4. Color Me!, 5. Meditteranean 1, 6. "Shelly" ... 20000+ views!, 7. "Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero." Marc Brown..., 8. Young Buddhist monks, 9. Stag fight

P.S. You should click on the blank square so you can actually see the picture. This square represents what I want to "be" when I "grow up." I thought about finding a different picture when it came up blank, but then I thought maybe it was a good reminder for myself as is. I do want to be a hero and design interventions that reduce maladies in entire populations. But if I've learned one thing this year, it's that viewing my "heroic" efforts reduced to a spreadsheet isn't really fulfilling for me, and it sort of sucks the humanity out of public service. I hope I can be an actual hand for someone to hold, even as I go on creating "big things." :)