Well, as you all no doubt know, the new year has begun and it is now 2012. At this time of the year, a lot of people take the time to reflect on the past year and what they may or may not have accomplished. I am certainly one of those people, and thought that I would use this post to look back on the past year of my life.
It certainly has not been an easy year for me, as I am still struggling to find a part-time job, let alone a full-time position as a police officer. I have continued to test with just about any department in the area, but villages don't have the money in the budget to hire more police officers. It has certainly been discouraging to be a year and a half out of college without a job, but I am really trying to stay positive and hope and pray that I will be able to find something soon.
In the meantime, I have continued to workout at the gym regularly in order to maintain and even improve my physical fitness. At the beginning of April I ran my first 10k race, along with my friend Donna, and even finished under my goal time of an hour. I wasn't able to run very many 5k races this year because of money constraints, but still managed to run two. The first was in the next town over in May, and was a lot of fun because I ran it with two friends from church. I didn't place in my age category, but I swear that I was thisclose! The other 5k that I ran was the Alumni run during Homecoming weekend at WIU. As I already mentioned in my last post, I got second place in my age group, and was pretty darn pleased about it! Another fitness goal I achieved this year was decreasing my time on the mile and a half run that I have to do as part of the physical testing for jobs. For my age a gender group, I have 16:21 to run it, but have been slowly decreasing that time to around 12:52. Essentially, I am even faster than the guys my age have to be! I have continued to lose a little but of weight, which is always a good thing, but it hasn't been my main focus. I've been trying move away from being so conscious about the number on the scale, and focusing more on just eating healthier and keeping in good shape.
A couple days before Christmas, I did a ridealong with the police department that I interned with. It was good to get back in the saddle so to speak and see a lot of the officers and other employees. Needless to say, a lot of them were surprised to see me and did a double-take. The officer that I rode with was not one that I knew because he is in the National Guard and wasn't there when I interned, so it was nice to get to know another of the officers. He is also a field training officer, so it was also still a bit of a learning experience for me. When he was away with the National Guard, he was over in Afghanistan for a while, so there was some minor bonding over our affinity for middle-eastern music. All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable evening and it was a nice way to break up some of my monotony.
Overall, though, it seems like it has been a pretty uneventful year for me, and I am pretty close to where I was a year ago. It certainly is not for lack of trying, though. I keep checking websites for news of more villages testing, and have been looking high and low for even a part-time job. Hopefully, 2012 will be a different year, and I'll be able to make some progress in the various areas of my life that have not had any sign of progress. So, here's to a new year and new beginnings!
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