For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘Bear with me as I indulge in some sentimentality …

‘What’s interesting to me about glancing back at the retro posts from last year at this time is how new this all was to me: not just Ann Arbor, although that was certainly a big part of it, but the whole adventure, from going back to grad school at a time in life when most of my undergraduate cohorts have all had two or three kids and become partners at their law firms or vice-presidents of marketing or seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurs (not a life I envy); to leaving and severing all my connections to a region where I’d felt comfortable, if increasingly insecure and simultaneously predictable, for much of the previous 20 years; to driving through, seeing, and sleeping in towns and states I’d never dreamed I’d encounter except in movies or books; to adjusting to life and people in a very different part of the nation. I feel proud of myself, and us, for having gone through this incredible ride and come through it wiser and better (and, I think, happier), and I am forever grateful to Steve and Bayley for putting up with me through the journey (and for agreeing to uproot their lives to start to put together the building blocks to start an entire new life of our own).

‘There’s something to be said for risk and leaping into the unknown. There’s also something to be said for the familiarity of having lived someplace for 365+ days.’