So, that was 2009.

Considering the fact that 2009 was a really rough year for a lot of people I know, I feel very lucky to have had made it through unscathed. In fact, there was a lot of celebration in 2009: my parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary in January, my grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday in February, and in September we all celebrated my brother’s wedding. Jeremy and I also celebrated the weddings of several of our friends, and we splashed out on celebrating our own 9th wedding anniversary by flying to Bologna for a weekend.

Though we rang in 2009 in Ireland and kicked off the year with our jaunt to Italy, 2009 was marginally less travel-heavy than 2008. Still, I got to hop across the pond several times and even managed to make it to Germany and a few different places in England. A year with lots of fun travel is a good year in my book, and I’m hoping that 2010 brings more trips to look forward to.

Professionally, I didn’t manage to accomplish everything I had planned to do in 2009. At the start of the year, I was all psyched up about focusing more on food writing and making a real effort to achieve something in that arena. If nothing else, I’d hoped to at least update Principia Gastronomica more often. Here at the end of December, I find myself in pretty much the same place I was 12 months ago, and while I’m not particularly happy about that, I’m not going to beat myself up about it either—I’m just going to try again in the coming year.

This coming year holds a lot of unknowns for me. I don’t know what it’s going to be like to move into our own place, I don’t know what kind of translation work I’ll have or whether I’ll get an unexpected opportunity in some other field, I don’t know what places I may travel to, what people I’ll meet, what new things I’ll learn, or what happy new memories I will have racked up by the time 2010 comes to an end. Though so much uncertainty can be nerve-wracking, it’s also exciting. What’s the fun in having everything mapped out for you from the start? Here’s to the great unknown that is the year 2010.