Jobs fill your pockets. Adventures fill your soul.
This month marks an important milestone in my life. A year ago I pledged to spend the year doing things that challenge, scare and empower me. Coincidentally, I embarked on this journey with an amazing guy who I had just started dating... we clicked immediately and started planning our life. It was as if the entire universe had conspired to bring us together at just this moment in our lives. He is a perfect partner for me in every way imaginable and an amazing father - both to his own son and to mine.
I have seen and done more in the past 12 months than in all the rest of my adult life. Each adventure brings a smile to my face as I remember the inside jokes, the shitty hotel rooms and the last-minute changes that still somehow resulted in fun to be had.
I'm naturally a pretty independent person. In Brett I have found that while I don't need a man in my life, having one who is my best friend, confidant, lover and the one I want to spend all my time with is pretty damn awesome.
And while it seems completely unbelievable, we've managed to navigate the waters of our first year together without ever fighting. Not once have we raised our voices or spoken condescendingly to one another. It is the first relationship I've ever been in where that is the case and I can tell you that it is incredibly refreshing to be able to have conversations, even the difficult ones, while knowing that it's not going to result in a blow-out argument. That's not to say that we haven't had our share of serious chats, but each one has been done lovingly and without any kind of verbal abuse - and I love that about him.
One of the things I love most about this man is his excitement to share the outdoors with our boys. We make a point to take them to explore every chance we get.
These two are inseparable when we visit Seattle.
We celebrated a year together in the place where it all began. A year ago for our 3rd date, we spent a weekend in Moab together camping and rock climbing. I was apprehensive going into the trip because, although I was very interested in him, I also knew that it would go either really well or really badly. And if it's the latter, the last place you want to be stuck with someone you aren't getting along with is out in the middle of the Moab desert in January. Fortunately, we had the best time and have since returned to Moab at least half a dozen times. We even discussed, as we lay in exhaustion from laughter in our hotel room, making it an annual tradition of ours to celebrate the years together there. I very much look forward to it.