2008: A Year for Starting Over

Looking back on this past year, I feel like I'm halfway through a complete life makeover. After nearly ten years in New York and 13 months in Peru as a missionary, I came home this year to embark on a nation-wide, six-month job hunt. Now I have a job, but am still trying to decide whether to relocate to the West Coast or the East Coast next year. After two years of big changes, it boggles my mind how many directions my life can still go in 2009.

I'm not alone, however; the whole country seems to be starting over with me! This year our consumption-based lifestyle, based on cheap gas and cheap credit, finally became unsustainable. Wall Street crashed, taking millions of nest eggs and jobs with it. Many of my friends in New York who did not quit their jobs to become missionaries are now being laid off anyway, and are facing similar questions about moving home with parents and starting over in a brand new career. And of course, we elected our country's first African-American, first Gen X, and first postmodern president, a guy with so many connections to the poor and marginalized that I still can't believe he's taking the most powerful office in the world. The world isn't just flat, it's been turned upside down!

I used to call the working life "a hamster wheel" rather than a rat race, because my friends and I all seemed to be running to stand still, working ever longer hours in big corporations in order to pay ever increasing rents, using 401K's and real estate as security blankets which doubled as golden handcuffs, keeping us in this exhausting keeping-up-with-the-Joneses lifestyle. Well, I am glad the hamster wheel has come undone and we are now rolling forward, as unpredictable and scary as it is. I'm hopeful that the next few years, which will most definitely be bumpy ones, will force us to grow and adapt, take better care of our finances, our environment, and each other. And I'm grateful for the lessons I learned in Peru, which I have a feeling will serve me well in this less-financially-secure world.