My holiday letter

It’s that time of year. Christmas is coming and Hanukkah is underway. The temperatures have dropped to obscene levels (polar bears are booking flights out of Iowa because it’s too cold for them). Along with all this come holiday letters from your friends and family.

I’ve never written a holiday letter, and I haven’t actually received that many, either. Though I’m starting to receive more. It’s typically a married couple thing or a family thing, and many of my friends fit into both of those categories (yet another sign of how old I’m becoming). My friends have written great letters in the past. Funny, well-written, even with blatant references to me, which I like, of course.

So this year, I’m going to write one. I may be single, but things have still happened in my life over the past 12 months worth documenting. And I will even open it to all my friends, strangers, whomever. You don’t even need to have a significant other to receive this!\

Enjoy!

Dear friends and family,

Greetings and Happy Holidays! I hope this letter finds all of you well. And I hope you and your family have had a happy, healthy and fruitful year.

At the risk of sounding clichéd, it’s been an eventful year. Professionally, it’s been a very successful and very fortunate year for me. The year began for me with a new job. I was hired as an Editorial Associate at the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine, and started the new position in February. After what seemed like a very long search and an attempted relocation on the other side of the country, I was grateful to have been hired for a position that was in many ways what I had been looking for.

I work in the Department of Psychiatry in a research lab that conducts multiple Huntington disease studies. I started out working on the redesign of our biggest HD study that ended up occupying much of my time for the first couple of months. I then took over the coordination process of submitting articles reporting research findings to medical journals and doing public relations work for our studies.
In recent months, I have refocused most of my attention on the PR work (which is what I was hired to do). There’s a lot of work to be done in this area, and I’m basically building most of our efforts from scratch. But it’s challenging, rewarding work. And I’m doing things to promote a study that will hopefully lead to treatments for a horrible disease, so I feel like I’m helping people, which is what I wanted to do since I started my latest job search.

I kind of define myself at this point in my life largely by what I’m doing professionally, so starting the new job was definitely the biggest and best event for me in 2009. But a close second would be completing my first marathon. I finished the Des Moines Marathon on Oct. 18 after over five months of intensive training. Why did I decide to run a marathon you ask? A friend I volunteer with told me how she was running one, and then one day basically on a whim, I decided it would be fun to train for and run one myself. It most certainly was fun, and one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.

Training was difficult and utterly time consuming. I scheduled the rest of my life around training runs this summer and fall. But it was worth it in the end. I finished the race with a time of 05:05:30, which isn’t setting any records (aside from my own PR), but was about where I wanted to finish. Crossing the finish line was incredibly exhilarating, and I recommend it to anyone who likes running. I hope to run one again sometime (I’ll likely be tempted again this year).

Other items that have defined my year include: moving to a new apartment in Iowa City (I like living here a lot); having season tickets to the University of Iowa football home games and witnessing the crazy season in person; becoming active in the social media scene (insert joke about my Twitter obsession here); having my “Fave Five” article published in my new favorite publication, Hoopla (the photo even turned out good!); continuing to volunteer once a week at the Ronald McDonald House in Iowa City (great place, love the staff and families); and starting a radio talk show with my brother Corey on KRUI.

I’ve enjoyed watching family and friends experience happiness and success in their lives this year as well. A big congratulations to all you who have had a baby this year, which includes so many of you that I won’t name anyone for fear of leaving someone out. We sure are getting older, aren’t we? For everyone who has embarked on new journeys this past year like I have, I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as much as I have. But I also know with the economy in its current state, things beyond our control have had an impact on our lives, and I hope the steps taken over the past year will begin to improve that aspect of everyone’s life very soon. As always, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

When the new year begins, I’ll be looking forward to winter being over so I can start running more frequently again/going outside again. I’ll also be looking forward to continuing to grow both professionally and personally. If you’re in to resolutions, I hope you find one that leads to a fruitful 2010 for you. My resolution is the same this year as always: to be a better person than I was the year before. I hope I accomplished that this year, and I hope to do the same next year.

Happy Holidays to everyone. I hope you had a wonderful year, and I hope 2010 is even better. Best wishes to you, your friends and family.

Sean Thompson

Still here, huh? Thanks for reading that. Hope it wasn’t too self indulgent. I’d love to hear about your year. What defined 2009 for you?