It doesn’t have to be something like saving a life or donating an organ to your relative (albeit those would be awesome). Just something you did that needed doing, that no one else was doing, and in doing so you knew that it was something…special…at least to you.
Here’s mine:
April 2015. It is 6am and I am in a long, long line at the Auckland, New Zealand airport waiting to check in for the long trip back to the USA. There are 5-6 flights leaving early in morning and literally hundreds of people are backed up, winding through the back-and-forth lanes 10-15 rows long (it was a single line feeding all the desks).
The Air New Zealand folks are trying their best to get people checked in and the flights out on time, and once or twice a lady comes to the front of the line and asks for people on a certain flight number to come forward (since that is the next one leaving). Trouble is, her voice barely carries to 1/5 of the crowd and people behind me are asking “what did she say?” But nobody does anything.
Before a career as a Government bureaucrat, I was a substitute schoolteacher; I can project my voice when I need to. So I call out, loud enough to be heard in the back of the crowd: “FLIGHT 420 TO MELBOURNE–COME ON DOWN. REST OF US JUST BE PATIENT.” About 15 or so people come forward, and I do it twice more when they ask for flights.
Had people come up to me and thank me for doing that all the way to Sydney.
It was nothing major, it didn’t change the world–but something needed doing and I damn well did it and it was my moment of awesome for this year.
So, what is yours?
We had one of those calls that proved challenging. It was an open line call with sounds of a struggle. We had the cell phone number that made the call and nothing else.
We worked with police to piece together information bit by bit. In the end a woman who had been kidnapped was rescued.
A friend of mine was having trouble getting her key into the front door lock, and I said “Just think of your secretary…” and she practically fell down laughing. I have been waiting DECADES to use that line on somebody who’d actually get it…
I found an edible mushroom besides the morels that I have hunted, found and ate since a child… took its photo and had it positively identified. Then we ate it. And loved it.
We lived! And found some more. And another of a different type that was positively identified. And ate it. And loved that!
It was a mother son thing this past summer.
And then took a pic that was prettyof a non-edible. Points for who knows who this is:
My oldest son is jumping from the world of school… to the world of job.
If I were Jewish I would be verklempt. I’m half German and so is that son… we’ll avoid being verklemmt. I don’t do uptight.
Revisions are a bitch! I keep editing but then I miss some sort of record so I Have to go researching and before I know it I am amassing more records to edit and add to the “book”
Wife and I took all the grandkids (parents NOT invited) for a week to the beach. Between airfare and meals and the hotel, it was the most expensive week of my life. But one of the best.
Congrats everybody.
My contract renewed this year and I was told they put new requirements for certifications and that I needed to get them. I studied and took the tests and on one of them I totally thought I failed it but I barely passed and I got to keep my job. A couple of months later I am still feeling a sigh of relief.
On a personal note I binge watched the first four seasons of Game of Thrones a month before the start of the season this year. That was a pretty awesome month.
It’s been a bit of a rough year for me. I didn’t have very many awesome moments. The one that comes to mind is giving my dad’s eulogy. Dad died in January. He hadn’t been in great health, but his death was unexpected. He fell and broke his hip and went downhill from there. Anyway, my mom and dad were devout Catholics, so of course there was a funeral Mass. My mom asked me if I would like to give the eulogy.
I had never seen anyone other than a priest give a eulogy at a funeral Mass. I decided I didn’t want my dad’s only eulogy to be some priest he barely knew babbling about Jesus or whatever, so I agreed to give a eulogy as well.
I was proud of it. I was happy with it as a piece of writing, and a lot of people told me they thought it was really moving. It made my mom so happy. It was a small thing, but I’m glad I was able to do it.
I got hired for a job that’s kind of weird. Job description: prepare the specs for the master data load programs of a certain SAP module for the project. I’m not supposed to get the data (it’s being compiled in an excel file, as it didn’t exist in electronic form anyway), or create the programs, just to define the programs.
It took me a few seconds to determine that no programs were needed, a few minutes to document it and a few days to get the bosses to understand this. Then a few weeks for them to understand exactly how each data object has to get loaded.
Sadly, instead of saying “oh, wow!”, giving me some sort of bonus and releasing me, they said “ooooh… do this other task then” and gave me something for which the person responsible doesn’t want to give me the information I need, but hey, I’m being paid to let my butt grow.
I set a new speed record for the end of class test for my real estate school. First test in less than 15 minutes (75 questions.) Second in 25. There were a few more complicated math problems on that one.
My instructor smiled at me when I handed in my test and said “I knew you’d be done first.”
I finally got my degree this year. Graduated summa cum laude to boot. When I finished up my last class I thought I had just missed it, not that magna cum laude is anything to sneeze at! I got my diploma in the mail a few weeks later and it had the summa cum laude designation on it. I about cried.
Completed my first real quilt as a gift to my mother and presented it to her- she said it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever made, bought or done for her in her life (and she’s 74 so that’s saying something).
