on january 4th, i started a new job as a legislative aid to representative morita for the 2010 hawaii state legislative session. it’s been a grueling couple of weeks and with opening day officially kicking off the legislative season yesterday, i expect things to get even tougher.

if you’re a regular visitor here, you’ll know i’m not one for over confidence, or really any confidence at all, but this job is the first i’ve had in a long time that often has me feeling overwhelmed. as someone who thought he had a pretty good bead on how things work at the legislature, feel like i’m learning to walk all over again. unless you’ve spent countless hours and years at the capitol, or have worked a session job before, there’s really no way for me to describe how it is.

as i’m sure others have said, the year has flown by. at the same time, though, it seems like so much has happened in the world, in america, and in my life. i’m in such a different place in my life now than i was at the beginning of the year; january 2009 seems so long ago….

here’s a month-by-month breakdown. maybe not the sexiest way to do it, but maybe the easiest?

for reasons unclear to me, i’ve been thinking a lot about death. not in terms of a self-inflicted death, but rather the nature of death, what it means and what comes next. and in thinking about what comes next, thoughts inevitably turn to notions of faith.

when i was a young child, i may have had faith, but if i did, that faith has long since left me. as far back as i can remember, i’ve never really had a belief in g-d, in the spiritual, in the afterlife. with that lack of faith came a desire to find other means by which to define, to borrow the title of one of my favorite books, life, the universe and everything.

looking back now, i think the drive to understand existence, not to mention my lack of faith, stemmed from deep-seeded self-doubt and the chronic depression from which i suffered.