Time travel – the 2015/10th anniversary edition

Can you believe the blog is TEN YEARS OLD this month? I’ve been blogging for a decade.

And that’s not the only milestone anniversary I’m celebrating in 2015. Mothership Photography is five years old this summer. In March, I’ll be celebrating the 25th anniversary (!!) of my first day of work with CRA and Beloved and I will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the day we met. That’s a bonanza of things to celebrate, so I’m hoping to do a whole series of retrospective posts in the next little while. I figured I’d launch it with this little meme I first published in 2005 and revisited in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2012 – heh, I have always been a little guilty of repeating myself.

So, here’s the 10th anniversary edition of the time traveller meme!

25 years ago today I would have been:

• Still in the “practice marriage” to my first husband
• Just moving back to Ottawa after a failed attempt to move back to my hometown of London, ON
• Unemployed (for the only time in my life) after having quit my job as a cashier supervisor at Zellers in hopes of getting a job with the government. I’d quit university to work full time at Zellers a few years before.
• About to move out of my in-laws’ house to an apartment in Vanier

15 years ago today I would have been:

• A newlywed, coming up on our first anniversary and our infertility diagnosis
• Freshly graduated (magna cum laude, no less!) from the University of Ottawa
• Living in a tiny condo townhouse off Hunt Club
• Working on assignment with Industry Canada in my first comms job in government

10 years ago today I would have been:

• Just coming back to work in public affairs at CRA after my maternity leave with Simon
• Wondering how I’d ever balance work and life with two toddlers
• Living in a townhouse in Barrhaven
• About to launch Postcards from the Mothership

5 years ago today I would have been:

• Finishing up my first year of working part-time four days a week, and (temporarily, as it turns out) working with Army News on web and social media
• Just about to move from Barrhaven to Manotick
• On the cusp of launching Mothership Photography

1 year ago today I would have been:

• Starting my “one decade to retirement” countdown but still enjoying my work as the social media lead for CRA
• Scouring the internet for PEI cottage rental information
• Finding out about my photo being used on the first of three book covers last year

This year I am:

• Super excited to have booked not one but TWO weeks in PEI later this summer
• Pretty much obsessed with PEI
• Celebrating 25 years since my first day of work with what was then Revenue Canada Customs, Excise and Taxation
• Still in love with my camera, and blogging, and social media in general

Today I:

• Am proud that I’ve also learned in the past year or so how to cook and eat real, whole foods and cut processed foods out of our family’s diet almost entirely
• Am cooking recipes for dinner I learned from Chef Michael Smith
• Met my activity goal of 10,000 steps
• Feel like I’m pretty much on track on this whole “lead a good life” thing – and am so grateful for that fact

Next year I hope:

• That my life has more PEI, more photos, more gratitude, more family joy, more home cooking – and maybe five less pounds 😉
• And — maybe a kitchen reno, finances willing

In five years I hope:

• To be within four years (gasp!) of retirement
• To have nurtured the blog and photography business to greater successes
• To have taught myself graphic design skills I can use for both the photography and blog businesses

And speaking of time travel, you know what else is significant about 2015? It’s the year Marty McFly visited when he and Doc Brown visited the future from 1985. We just watched Back to the Future parts I and II with the boys over Christmas – speaking of revisiting, if you haven’t seen them lately, they really do stand up to the test of time! Turns out that’s what I was doing 30 years ago – watching Back to the Future for the first time in theatres as a shy, awkward, boy-crazy dreamer who only wanted to get married and have babies. If only I’d had the faintest idea how much more awesome life would turn out than I could have imagined back then!