What the past year has taught me

In previous years, I felt bad writing about today being my birthday (a birthday I share with a few good friends, both from the online world and from academia). In a complete twist of academic surprise, my good friend and academic colleague who ALSO studies Mexican environmental policy, Dr. Donna Lybecker, has the same birthday as I do (today). My adored Meghan Warby, communications and citizen engagement specialist whom I met through Twitter (and who hosted me in Toronto last year) also turns a new year-round leaf today. And Mandy Gratton, whom I met through the blogging world, mom, HR specialist and entrepreneur extraordinaire, also has a birthday today.

So, what did the past 12 months teach me? In summary, I think what I learned in the past year was that charting a new destiny for myself and a completely different pathway from what I had planned originally has in fact made me stronger, wiser and happier. It’s been a year of personal loss (especially with the passing of my good friend Derek), but it’s also been a year of enormous professional growth, particularly in my academic and consulting lives.

And in an incredible twist of cruel irony, I *have* to work on my birthday (I teach today, and I am speaking at the Blogging Summit of Social Media Week Vancouver). But at least, I get to spend all of today with special people in my life, both in the social media world, in the academic world (my students) and in my personal life.

So, off to work I go. Happy birthday to my fellow astral twins, and of course, I’m quite happy to be alive. Given how difficult my birth was (I was breech and had the umbilical cord around my neck and had to be brought into this world with forceps) I am incredibly grateful to be alive. And I hope it shows.