Over the past two months, I've forgotten to mark two important anniversaries in my life. Both of them have had monumental impact on my life, so much so that although they slipped my active mind as far as blogging is concerned, they stayed lodged in that "to do" folder in my head, in the hope that I'd get back to them eventually. And here I am.
Three years ago, on a temperate day in the beginning of October, I lost a job. It was a demeaning, dejecting, depressing experience. I was convinced it was the end of my professional career, of all the strides I had made, that I would be destroyed. But three years later, I have the flexibility of freelance, the security of a few regular clients. I write for variety, I write for personal exploration, and to maintain my sanity. I'm living as a writer in Manhattan, writing about things I'm passionate about. It's a dream for so many people, but here I am, the inadvertent freelancer. I may not be making a fortune. In fact, I will tell you I am far from making a fortune. But my career is far from destroyed. Immersing myself in bloggity goodness in order to create my own writing opportunities, I inadvertently created my own PR machine that keeps my name out there. I have overcome professional adversity. I'm doing okay.
More recently, last November, in fact, a meeting took place that changed my life. Brokered by the good doctor, it involved my meeting with a group of bloggers who, I was told, were in from Israel and wanted to meet "Esther the Urban Kvetch." I didn't know much about them at that point; I was nervous. It was like being on a blind date with four people at once. We met at an Upper West Side eatery, ate some Moroccan food, played foosball with some Mexicans, drank arak and beer, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I feel strongly about acknowledging anniversaries of moments of import in your life; in those moments, we're not always aware that change is occurring, that those decisions will have any kind of lasting impact. But with the benefit of hindsight, these liminal moments emerge as highlights of the times that have since passed--acknowledgment of their value lends inspiration to the daily grind, to the endless contacts with strangers that blogging and the internet provides. Here, quite literally, is a world of my own making, away from the watchful eyes of those who were never protective of my own interests, never encouraging of my professional direction. Here is where I am, where I can wish myself a happy anniversary without seeming endlessly self-indulgent, and where I can thank those who have made the topography of my life a little rockier, but a more textured, and overall, a more interesting place.