I used to post pictures here more often. I don't so much anymore. This is a picture of me at the Miss Africa Utah beauty pageant last night with Miss Nigeria Utah. She's a very nice Mormon girl from Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. This is my fourth year volunteering for Miss Africa Utah. I had a great time. 

Sunday was the start of Daylight Savings Time. It also felt like the first veritable day of spring in Utah. Warm enough to wear nothing but a light jacket--even shorts if you want. It feels good to welcome the start of spring: new births and new beginnings. It's been almost a full year since I started this website, and it's marvelous to think of all the positive, beautiful changes that I've undergone over the course of the year.

Fall semester was pretty difficult, but I feel like that's not even the most difficult challenge I've endured since last May. Last summer was probably the most difficult time, overall, of the past year, just because I was still getting on my feet and adjusted to a lot of new processes: working 70 hours a week, practicing and internalizing therapy principles, and so on. This winter has been pretty calm and tame compared to the other months, and I expect the spring to pass by pretty calmly. Spring will begin pretty gently with Miss Africa Utah, the Passover seder, lunch with an old friend, and passport renewal. I don't anticipate much turbulence in April, May, and June--just the quiet pursuit of my goals. April through August will be a really important period for me, where I'll be able to really build up my emergency savings fund and get closer to having six months of living expenses saved up.

I wonder what area or career of the finance world I'm going to end up in, eventually. I certainly see the world differently, today, from how I saw it my first day of graduate school. I think there was just, generally, a lot of excitement about the idea of securities--oh my gosh, securities--and the privilege of being licensed or otherwise specially trained to handle them. Not so much anymore; I mean, securities are just a product like any other product. When I was considering becoming licensed at Wells Fargo, I noticed that a lot of the entry-level positions relating to securities have the qualities of low-grade service jobs. I'm more interested in becoming rich enough to earn and own securities now than I am in necessarily being the person to actually trade them.

Ought to buy a nice new button-down shirt to wear to Passover. It would be nice to have something from Vineyard Vines, but I'm probably going to end up doing Ralph Lauren or J. Crew.

Struggle to find the appropriate way to say this, but I'm really inspired by and grateful for my friends. In Park City, friends like Kurt and Cameron inspire me to be creative about the way I think about career development and trying to make the most of this city. My grad school friends inspire me in more was than I can count, and I'm grateful for my lingering connections to Provo and Baltimore friends too.

This economy is really hard and difficult, I'm realizing as I get older. I'm lucky to have any job at all, let alone a job that's even tangentially related to my interests. Although I wish I was making twice as much money as I make, I've gotta realize, certainly, that I'm lucky to make above 50k. I'm well on the path, I realize, to make more--I just need to be patient and recognize that it does not happen immediately. While I wait to have a little more clarity about what job I want to do, I have no problem taking time to be a little more observant and humbly grateful for the privileges that are all around me.

Six months from now, it's going to be starting to get cold again. Although I look forward to summer, I'm going to be quietly focused, during these summer months, on shoring up and saving so that the winter does not have to be quite so hard. And then this winter I'll be planning for 2019's warmer months. I feel like 2019 and 2020 are when my life will really start to pick up.