One year ago today I got a call from a man named Mike Moloney, offering me a contract with Celebrity Cruises. Without having called him back for a definitive answer I already knew that I had gotten a job. Before I got home I stopped at the market and picked up a small bottle of champagne, and zipped to the house to tell my mom. I popped the bottle open before even telling her why, and we finished it after we danced around the kitchen for a few seconds.

Last night she reminded me that it had been a full year since I got the news, and she asked me if I thought I was any different now. If I'm being honest; I think I have grown more as a person then I would have expected in one year. Having seen more of Europe then most people dream of in one lifetime, and having been exposed to more cultural differences then one man would get working at a YMCA in the middle of NYC, I would say that my travel certainly helped in my personal growth. Along with seeing the world, I was also forced to adapt to a group of strangers upon leaving for Vegas. I knew no one, and had no expectations as to what sort of people I was hurling myself into face first. Fortunately, they all turned out to be some of the best people on the planet, but after bridging the gap of getting to know the cast there were the other 800 staff and crew to jump into.

After being on the ship for a little over a month, I had learned the names of most and started to get comfortable with others of the ships behind the scenes men and women. And as I look back on the past few months of 2010, I am thankful that I have been able to talk to, let alone bond with so many people from so many places.

So today, I would like to extend a Happy New Year to all my friends overseas and on ships. Though you may be far from home, you have family and friends in the people that you are surrounded by. I send my love to you all.

Today I sit in the chair of my new job as an Executive Assistant to a Venture Capitalist. Tis' my first day alone, as I have been training for a little under 3 weeks, and will now take over all by myself.
Only 2 months ago, I was dancing professionally on a Celebrity cruise ship that sailed around the Mediterranean and some of the Caribbean for close to 7 months. Strangely enough, when I returned home to Massachusetts, life as I knew it hadn't changed much without me. I found it ridiculously easy to jump right back into suburban life, making it seem like I almost never left. Physically I am back- but I find it a little harder to return emotionally.

I still have dreams, that I am back on the ship dancing. More often then not, they are intertwined with some of the things I am now involved with at home, making them half ship/half land life dreams. Most of the time they involve the people that I met and developed close relationships with while I was at sea, and I typically wake feeling a sort of emptiness without those people within arms reach. Though I am extremely happy to be home and close to my family again, there is something to be said for the bonds formed while crammed onto a boat for a little over half a year. Those people helped me figure out who I am, and what I deserve out of this life. They helped me realize that each day and each person is more then a blessing, and even though you've heard it before, I lived feeling like each second I had with them was something to be relished and never squandered. I now find this to be a driving force in my day to day.

So, now I find myself having done a complete 180 and settling in the corporate world for the time being. I am taking over for a friend who is on maternity leave for 2 months, and I will be working 40 hour work weeks from now until February, or whenever she decides to return. And as I sit here and pretend to be a expert at office administration, my mind wanders back to the people that stole my heart while I danced on a stage in the middle of the ocean. I will keep in touch and talk to them all as much as I can, but I am also realistic and I know that time and distance will not be a friend to all of us. I will loose some of them to the labor that will cause our friendship to fade. But until that time comes, our memories of the steps we danced and the times we spent together are still fresh, and they still burn my eyes when I get a little too much time to think.

The best thing I can do to continue to fully ease back into land life, is to take one day at a time. Because no matter how far from the sea I get, or how close to the stage I return, I will forever be thankful that I can wake up every morning for another day and another dance.

I'm a lucky girl to live such a wonderful life.