2018

I realized I haven’t posted anything to my blog in some time now so I thought I should probably try to catch back up. I haven’t posted here for a variety of reasons. I think people in general have truly moved away from blogs, or at least as a person with no particular focus or reason to drive people to my blog site, I certainly have. I typically use social media to keep friends and family updated on my activities, so updating my blog hasn’t seemed as important or urgent. Also, as you can see from my site, I often tried to focus on interesting concerts or entertainment I attended, but sadly 2018 was a rough year for me so I didn’t end up going to anything interesting (other than movies). Here is the essential summary of how 2018 went for me: mostly terrible. It started out with me in Seattle, finding out that my work was ending. I started looking for work and interviewing for local positions but didn’t find anything for some reason. This is not typical for me so I kept thinking my next role would just be around the corner. Sadly it didn’t come and so my wife and I had to make other plans for our life. In the midst of this hardship, my father passed away sooner than expected, and so we had to fly into Dallas to join my family there for the funeral. Obviously this was a sad time. Shortly after this event, my wife and I planned to move out of our nice apartment, moved nearly all our possessions into storage, and then made the move to LA (at the end of summer) where we downsized our footprint (rented a room from friends). We went to LA so my wife could start back on her nursing career, since her license was newly issued in CA, and because WA state required her to have so many hours of experience before they would issue her a license to practice in WA. So we moved, and luckily due to all her connections in LA, it was a pretty decent experience. My wife’s work went well, I was able to quickly find work, and we had many friends and family to visit with. Of course it took the rest of the year to get more caught up on our bills, but things got better. Then just before Christmas, my last living grandparent, my grandmother, passed away. The timing for this was naturally terrible but she had lived a long life, so I couldn’t really get too upset about it. It was just the timing that I didn’t like, and especially in the same year as my father. In short, I was glad to see 2018 end as I hope 2019 will be a better year for me. LA has been ok for the most part. It wasn’t too different from what I expected. I had visited the area many times in the past, but I had never lived there before. It has nice weather for most of the year, has nice beaches, has everything you could need or want, but it has way too many people and the traffic is pretty terrible, And of course there are some scary areas of town that you try to avoid getting stuck in. I don’t know that we want to live here for too long but it helps a lot that my wife has so many friends in the area to keep us entertained.