New Year, 2019
““Whereof what’s past is prologue; what to come, in yours and my discharge.””
I’m not big on new-year resolutions, but I maintain a vision board during the year. It has kept me focused and I have been pretty good at ticking off goals and milestones for the last four years or so.
2018 had been one of continuity. I have settled into work and after two years I can objectively say I have done outstanding, leading my department and accomplishing the goals we have set out to do. Now whether that lasts, that’s the question for the coming year. Anyone who is familiar with start-up biotech and with Regulatory Affairs know that the environment can change as quickly as a summer thunderstorm.
I continue to advocate for community as treasurer for GAPA. I continue to sing with GAPA Men’s Chorus and represent our community through music. We have a great board – creative, energetic, ambitious, fun – and it was great to see our processes begin to stabilize, to see our accounts replenished, as we hit our 30-year anniversary in 2018. With the American midterm elections in full swing, I helped restart our political action committee (GAPA PAC) after almost a decade of absence. A lot of mind-numbing paperwork, but politics is important. The decisions people in power make permeate our lives and we can never sit back and think we are unaffected. So we stand up and show up and be the check against powerful interests.
For the last three years, I have traveled to Hawaii (Oahu, twice; the Big Island, thrice) and to Taiwan (twice). They have become my favorite getaways. We visited last April and got to hang out with boyfriend’s family there. It was a lot of fun introducing to nieces the excitement of nigh market munchies. I plan to visit Taiwan again this year as a side trip after our choir's participation in this year's LGBTQ choral festival in Japan. I am looking forward to seeing cherry blossoms in April in Tokyo.
I continue to take classes – that’s a yearly resolution for as long as I have mental faculties intact. In 2017, it was swimming. I can now free-stroke and backstroke, and get in the water without panicking. I can play a few bar lines of a simple piano piece. This year, I will continue to strengthen those skills and take up art, to develop that part of my brain.
I would like to travel more, but that is always contingent on how many vacation hours I must spare from work. In lieu, there are a lot of hidden gems in our wild places here in California and the surrounding states to discover. I would like to hike and camp and check off a few places from my National Parks passport. I look forward to the last season of Game of Thrones. That’s pretty much it. I would like to spend this year creating, rather than watching. I am unplugging myself from social media for the most part and just lurk occasionally to make sure my family and friends are okay.
It’s the year of the pig, so I am wishing for a sumptuous crispy lechon kind of year, filled with adventure and fun.