Glory Be!

Well, I'll be darned, would you look at that! To the left of this post, 365 (or perhaps, fewer) days to go until Gus graduates from his Master of Science in Nursing Anesthesia program. One year left until that last puzzle piece is aha! turned upside down and snugly fitted into place.

For me, this whole experience is beginning to verge on the surreal. To be this close to a goal we've had our eyes singularly trained on for nearly a decade, a chance we took at taking control of our destiny and changing the trajectory of our lives. Over all this time, every decision made, every job taken, every move suffered has been in obsessive pursuit of this one ambition: To create for ourselves the best life possible. And to think it is almost here, to have actually done everything that we said we would do, is mind-boggling.

As anyone who has pursued an education outside of the straight-out-of-high-school model knows, ours is not always an enviable world. The spell of freedom and innocence that lingers over the typical higher education tract is gone and new responsibilities quickly rush in to fill the void. Life sometimes feels like a pressure cooker filled with an unbalanced recipe of commitments, sacrifices, finances, stress, responsibilities and impatience threatening to blow at any point. But, people do it every day and many, in circumstances much more difficult than ours, to better their lives and fulfill their dreams.  

And so tonight, with an extra spring in my step and the wind to my back, I head off to my second-to-last tap dancing class.

People always say you can do anything for a year, right? Well, try ten years. One year left feels like nothing!