Obligatory reflection of my one year in San Diego:

A year ago I left a safe haven, a home in which I’d lived in for all of my childhood and briefly after finishing college–still being looked after by my parents, “it’s 8:10am, aren’t you going to wake up for work?”, or, “what time are you going to be back tonight? Okay, just be safe.”

It was a world where I had no responsibilities other than to get to work on time, not screw anything up, and make sure our weekends weren’t too crazy.

It was all routine, it was all seemingly too easy, this “adulthood”–it was almost like high school all over again. Other than cleaning the house and doing the dishes a few times a week (okay even that’s an exaggeration), all the major bills/mortgages were taken care of, every meal was accounted for, and even our fridge was continuously stocked with ice cream and peanut butter. What more could a 23-year-old ask for?

Life was in a word, simple–no, simpler than simple. I was an adult who just finished living hundreds of miles from home completing a degree all on my own, and I had just ventured through a far off continent managing not to be kidnapped, and my responsibilities, and what was expected of me was no greater than it was when I was up late at night bullshitting papers on Beloved and learning derivative rules.

Stay on course, demonstrate some level of ambition, and keep out of trouble, and all would be well in the world.

Then came the day where in a mere 8 hours, I was 480 miles away from my comfort zone, into a new city I’d been to a total of 4 days previously, moving into a house with 3 random roommates that I’d never met before, into a business that I was only beginning to learn about, and *gasp* had to become accountable where each meal would come from every night.

And as someone who can’t tell the difference between a spatula and a cheese grater, that wasn’t easy.

A month following the move I wrote a brief reflection, something I wish I had done more often now–and in it I wrote:

I feel like I’ve gone through weekends that have lasted longer than this past month has, and I have little doubt that I’ll wake up tomorrow, look at the calendar and realize it’s 2010.

And while 2010 is slowly sneaking up on us, the past year has certainly come and gone much too fast. My sentiments from 11 months ago still  remain, the work-hours of the day still fly by, it still rarely ever truly feels like “work”, and dull moments are surprisingly still hard to come by.

Most importantly the 4 of us have yet to have any desire to kill each other, and the threat of running off with all of our company funds some 20 miles south to the border has, um, unlikely crossed any of our minds…yet.

I’ve certainly grown as much as I have over the past year than at any other point in my life, but to say that I’ve changed much would be false. It’s a college style life where flip flops and shorts are the norm, weekends are mostly blurs, and spontaneous Vegas trips are aplenty…but with the slight added responsibility of actually, running a business on the side.

I can still stand to put off growing up to a later date…