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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

2013 What A Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2013 proved most eventful. After a fun-filled 2012, 2013 started off... on the couch. New Year's Eve last year, I had dinner with Person and the Joneses and then promptly fell asleep on the couch missing all ringing in and other celebretory festivities. But perhaps I needed the sleep to prepare for the year ahead...

From a trip to Portland to visit my sister... to a Reverse Oregon Trail (Let's-Move-Amy-Back-To-Chicago-Trip)... to a brief nanny job in New York... to a relaxing fall leaves Colorado tour... to an Adriatric Cruise in the Adriatric (I realize this is redundant, but you guys - seriously!!)... this year I travelled much, and felt extremely grateful. I saw some gorgeous sites (mostly in the US!) and some amazing artifacts (mostly in Italy).  If I had to choose 2013's world's best sights, I really, really loved Crater Lake in southern Oregon,
The David in Florence, Italy, and the ancient Greek theatre (complete with coastal views) in Sicily, Italy.

Other totes awesome and random loveliness includes... experiencing Moltnoma Falls, 
hearing Pope Francis speak, 
being groomed by fish,
my gma turning 90, 
me turning 35, 
riding horses in a national forrest in Colorado, 
taking Laurel to her first musical (You're A Good Man Charlie Brown - that's her with Snoopy),
doing a private home reading with Eugene Lee, being gifted a hot tub, officiating my first gay wedding,

and buying a real formally-alive tree for my living room for Christmas.  

With all the travel, it proved a difficult year to do theatre. But I managed to squeeze in two shows with the University of Texas's Department of Theatre and Dance (random, I know).  The first, Intimate Apparel, was super exciting and I made some great friends out of it (shout out to Melissa in NY)!
And the second proved to be my third experience with workshopping a new piece, and I got a roommate out of it (the director's son). So, win win.

In addition, 2013 brought a return to churchwork. My grandfather would be so pleased. This fall there were four weddings, (the funerals were earlier in the year) and three preaching gigs. And I created my own website...wait for it... wait for it... annpittman.com. Anticlimactic, I'm sure, but hopefully efficient in explaining who I am and what I can offer the world (outside of a sometimes snarky, self-indulgent blog). So feel free to hire me to speak at your conference, preach at your church, design your website (I designed mine as part of my day job!), sing at your funeral, act in your play, or officiate your wedding.

This year confirmed for me that I am indeed a strange bird, but I fly everywhere I can. I've found t's true: green witches defy gravity and caged birds sing, and neither seems the worse for it. And I've met a Person who loves me for all and despite all these things. Life is ying and yang. And for this, I am also grateful.

Lest you think 2013 was all fun and foreign lands, I can assure you, it came with its fair share of challenges and heartbreak. I lost my "Other Mother," the AISD giant and underdog championing Jane Nethercut.
I fucking hate cancer. You may quote me on that. But despite this and other eulogies delivered (both literal and metaphorical), 2013 proved to be my great awakening, if you will. But all you voyeurs will not be getting much detail on that until it comes in real written form. Yep, I wrote a book (we'll see if it gets published), I have another one in the works, and I find this wakeful, post-knowing life pretty fantastic.

So, ladies and gentlemen, madams and monsieur, raise your glasses and "lets do cheers" (to quote my favorite four-year-old friend) to a great 2013 and to an even better 2014. To 2014!

To 2014.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a lovely recap. Did you ever write that childrens book about God where she is referred to as a she? I would like that. God has been making great changes in me. Do you remember that conversation we had awhile back in the bar about gay marriage and women ministers? God's pretty much finished moving my frame of mind in the right direction :) Anyway I hope you are doing well. We'll hopefully be in Texas this summer to have baby Aidan baptized, maybe we'll see you!