My life has gone through several changes in the last year, and one of my regrets is that due to those changes, I've been unable to participate in the site as much as I'd wanted. I've been doing network technical support almost exclusively for a year now, and it's left me drained at the end of the workday. When I come home, the last thing I've wanted to do, it seems, is turn on my computer and stare at a monitor again after I have finally escaped the obligation of my employment. I feel a great loyalty to my company, though. It's young and energetic and has the most healthy environment of anywhere I've ever worked. I'm encouraged by the fact that I've been told I'll soon be moved from my present position to one fully on the team of our interactive department, so I'll finally be able to devote time to my more creative abilities, which is where I believe my strengths are best realized.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this development, because you know the story - if you see something you really want, you might cross a crowded room and get it, only to have it reach out and strangle you. Wish me luck, because I'm betting that it opens my mind to possibilities and will drive me to be more expressive instead of a borderline Type-A personality for half of every business day. I hope the changing responsibilities at work bleed into my personal life, giving me greater ambition to work even harder to discover new ways of opening up and sharing more with others - including all of you.

For the site's anniversary, we thought it would be appropriate to provide a link back to our favorite journal entry from the year that has passed, or one that we simply enjoyed writing. I thought at first that I would link to my entry about last year's Burning Man because it probably said the most about ME. I also considered my entry about Christmas shopping from around Thanksgiving, because I had a lot of fun with it and I'll always be, I hope, a kid at heart. I eventually realized the entry having the most relevance to our community, which is what we're celebrating, is the tribute to Xebra. Safari has moved us by her intensely personal recount of their battle with his illness, and I strongly believe the spirit of people like Xebra is what will keep us together, growing, and enriching us while we learn from each other.

#20