YEARS

onder if some people view years as "good" or "bad" like I do.

1977 - good, don't remember why, but good
1983 - my brother died.
1987 - a very mixed year 1st half great, 2nd half bad (My final semester of HS was great while transition to college was bad by epic standards.)
1993 & 1994 - Just bad and let's leave it at that.
1995 - Good, started weather job.
1996 - Maybe the best year of my life.  Nothing particularly exciting happened, but just a great year.
1997 - Spellman died and I moved to Nebraska.  If there is hell on earth I was living it.
1999 - Lost my job in weather, dealt with mental illness in someone close to me and slowly felt my body shutting down.
2002 - Ended up in an emergency room with they symptoms of a heart attack (at the age of 33).  Fortunately, it was the end of a long road of having no thyroid hormone in my body.
2003 - Good, new job teaching that I really loved.
2005-2008 - all a blur as I sank into a pretty deep depression and I'm amazed that I still have any friends given that era.
2009 - Great, but feeling guilt.  Can a person really get paid so much for doing so little work?  I ended up writing 1154 blog posts that year mainly because I felt I MUST keep busy doing something, work was too easy.
2011 - After 40+ years on this planet I've never had a year quite like this one:  A year with extraordinary highs and extraordinary lows.  The first high was an amazing job offer followed by my current employer trying to keep me.  Then in May I started dreaming of Mom's death.  The dreams were every night and I had the most prolonged sleepless period of my life.  I had week after week with no more than 3 hours per night.  When I came home in early August and saw how great she was doing I felt incredible relief.  Sadly, the nightmare turned to reality two weeks later.

A couple of weeks ago my Dean came to me with a job proposal that would not be much more work and would pay more.  Yesterday we came to an agreement on the pay.  Umm. I don't know what to say.  My pay raises this year are the equivalent of two minimum wage workers working 40 hours per week.  I get a nice title, "Director" and an unbelievable office - 1500(?) square feet that I share with a co-wo