A year or so ago, I wrote my very first blog post from my new apartment as I awaited my first day of my first semester of grad school.

I didn’t know a lot then. Not that I know a lot now, but still even less then. What I did know, though, was that I was about to chase the dream that I had been thinking about since the 6th grade. At that point, I may have known what the dream was, but I could have never guessed what would happen during a year of chasing it down.

I befriended an alley cat, saved an island of villagers with rain and learned why chickens cross the road. I went on a magical safari, yelled at crew mates on a submarine, got tricked into walking up stairs in VR, and served drinks at an alien bar. I starred in a Queen music video, improv-ed scenes about killer balloons and Whiplash, slogged through four new software programs, and handed out my very own business cards. I researched baseball players and national parks and historical tragedies, directed a rocket ship in distress back to a space station, searched for a fox to bring back the Northern Lights, and helped others build their own neighborhoods.

Oh, and probably the strangest of all, I moved to Pittsburgh.

I know a few more things now than I did before this past year began, things I would have never learned if I had not started chasing my dream. Because of that, I’m going to keep chasing it through whatever looking glass it points to or rabbit hole it points down because that’s the only way I know how to truly do this thing.

And it means I get to keep doing cool stuff.

I mean, I’m programming VR chairs (I have just as many questions as you do), making interactive devices to assist the disabled, teaching people how to create dragons, and lots of other stuff that I cannot even talk about yet.

And I’m only 5 days into this semester.

So I got all that going for me.

Which is nice.