It is hard for me to believe that a whole decade has passed since the Y2K scare. A lot has changed in my life in the last ten years. At this time in 2000 I was in my second year of commerce at the U of S. I was dating my very first boyfriend (though we were days away from my very first breakup) and I was a tender 19 years old. I still remember my 19th birthday party. It was the day me and my first boyfriend broke up, and I was very happy and relieved to have it over with. I took a few friends and we went out to BP's for supper. I am not sure if I had an alcoholic beverage or not.
In 2001 I decided to quit university because I was having some major issues with anxiety/depression. I just didn't feel right about being in university any more. I know it was probably stupid to quit university after three years, but after I did that, I stopped having multiple anxiety attacks each day, and only had an occasional one after that. I decided to spend a summer working as a counselor at Camp Kadesh. That was a great summer. After that, I decided to take a year off to work and try to figure out the next direction my life would take.
That fall I spent a couple of months working for Envirotest Laboratories. They work with soil samples sent in by farmers. They test them for various levels of certain elements then recommend fertilizers to the farmers. I really enjoyed working there and was a little disappointed that it was only a temporary position. I remember getting the call that I gotten that job, it was on September 11, 2001. In December of 2001 I started working at Impark because of a suggestion of my friend Ang who also worked there. I can't believe I worked there until May of 2004.
After a few months of working in a parkade booth, I really decided I needed to find some schooling to get me out of there. I looked a few options but decided I would apply for massage therapy. In 2002 I was accepted to the program and started in August of that year. I think that my massage therapy training really changed me in a lot of ways. I went from being super shy to being a lot less shy. I became a lot more comfortable with my body, and a lot less modest when it came to my body. I guess that is what happens when you have to undress down to your underwear in front of other people every day for two years. I also gained a lot of confidence in massaging perfect strangers. It was definitely weird at first, but now it is just second nature. I really enjoyed massage school. I loved learning about the human body. I really liked my classmates, and I really appreciated the small teacher/student ratio. Our class got to be good friends and I still keep in touch with a number of those friends.
At the start of my last term in massage school, January of 2004, I met Jason online. That was a definitely highlight of the past decade. We dated, got engaged and got married in a matter of a year. I had heard people say 'when you know, you know' before, but I finally understood it for myself. When we were dating, I finished massage school, wrote my board exams and got my first job working at Dance Saskatchewan as an RMT. It was an alright place to work, but just not enough exposure and hard to build up a reasonable amount of clientele. In May of 2005 I was hired on at Pacific Avenue Massage Therapy and after four and a half years I am still there.
In the past decade I have become a wife, a homeowner, a dog owner, an auntie, a registered massage therapist, got my driver's license and owned my first three cars. A friend of mine said to me one day, that she doesn't think she will ever accomplish as much as she has in the last 10 years of her life, in any other decade. I would tend to agree. I am curious to see where the next 10 years will take me. It is really amazing how quickly the last 10 years seemed to go by. But when I think about the fact that I have been an RMT for five and a half years already, and married for nearly five years. Tomorrow is my 29th birthday and the day after that it will be six years since Jason and I first chatted online. I am curious to look back on my life at age 39 and see what has changed!
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