When I was seventeen, it was a very good year...

As I look toward 2K10, I can't help but reflect on the year - or even the decade - that was. I always thought that 2008 would live in infamy as the Worst Year Ever, having been punctuated by the cruel occasion known as the Note Incident of Aught Eight. If you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said it would be hard to top coming home from work to find your live-in boyfriend had left without warning, cleaning out the house, leaving only a note and disappearing into the ether. It was as humiliating as it was soul-crushing, although the former sensation stuck with me longer than the latter.

On reflection, though, many years have been worse. 2006, for example, was the year I buried my father. 2002 was the year I had to say good-bye to him when the Alzheimer's took hold. 2001 was the year my world was shaken first by the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and then by a brutal mugging the week later.

But the benefit of age (and time) is perspective.

2001 will also go down as the year I reconnected with my mother on a road trip that I still think of fondly.

2002 will go down as the year I gained the courage to tell the Law Firm of Doom to f- off and went off on my own. It would be a couple of years before I made my great break from the Golden Handcuffs, but the events of that year set the ball in motion.

2006 will go down as the year I finally shed the 75 pounds I had packed on through years of lawfirm discontent. It was the year I decided to become a DiveMaster. And it was the year I came back home to celebrate the holidays with my bio and urban families.

And 2008, crap as it was, is now known as the year I saw the world change when Obama was elected. It was the year I swam with humpback whales, an experience which changed my life. And it was the year that I found out, through my own personal tragedy, that I do have people I can count on here.

And so, what can be said about 2009? By all accounts, it was a crap year. I started out getting dumped just seven days into the new year and losing a whole new group of friends as a result. I ended it alone on Christmas wishing I was anywhere but where I was. There were two places in particular I wanted to be but both were an impossibility and the helplessness that ensued begat a great and deep sadness.

But perspective being what it is, coupled with advancing age (!), it has only taken a couple of days for me to reflect and realise how much 2009 had to offer me.

So instead, 2009 will go down as the year I has the privilege of showing New Zealand to my mother and Aunt Pat.

It was the year I saw a glorious and magical display of dancing hot air balloons in the Basin Reserve.'

It was the year I finally realised that there is nothing un-feminist about wearing pretty dresses and bright red lipstick and embraced both with two hands. The year I settled on my signature scent.

It was the year I got over my fear of the cold water and got back into diving. And set off to see what Jacques Cousteau called one of the top ten dive sites in the world.

It was the year that I really came into my job and then took on a new professional challenge that showed me another layer of what it means to be a public servant.

It was the year I got over the intimidation of having grown up around talented photographers and took my own shot at taking pictures.

It was the year I finally started driving again and forgot why I had waited so long or what I had been afraid of.

Like a New Zealand Pinot Noir, 2009 had a lot of complexity and a myriad of competing flavours and textures, but in the end it was a very good year.