(Emily E. Smith) Unedited.

On half my Saturdays, I woke before dawn, left my house in the dark and listened to scanners; I sat in strangers’ living rooms and kitchens; I frequented a courthouse and a jail; I changed the name on my mailbox; and on a rainy day, I walked a mile into a cave until I was breathing ashen dust.

This year felt like four lifetimes to me. It didn’t go by fast or slow. But there were many distinct chapters with some lunatic twists and turns. Looking back, it both scares and inspires me to see how dramatically a life can change, and how quickly.

When you’re young, every year is marked by milestones and firsts. For me, this was my first full year out of college. It was also, fortunately, my first calendar year of professional employment and fully supporting myself. Between the paydays and the bill-paying, so much happened. As we wait for the dawn of 2012, here are some of the lessons and events I’m reflecting on from the year past:

• This year, I felt the love and generosity of a lot of people in my life – both in and out of the inner circle. The outliers showed so much kindness, grace and heart in their caring text messages, emails, a hand on my shoulder and parking-lot conversations. Even better, at the worst moments, I learned what it is to have the truest friends (I’m talking about the inner circle now). I know what it is to have a friend who cries when you cry. That’s an overwhelming gift and one of the most hopeful takeaways of 2011.
• One of my best friends graduated from college this year, and for many weeks, I watched as she wrestled with some of life’s toughest decisions. At a crossroads, she chose love and the possibilities that come with it. I was in the passenger seat on a drive home from California, with lush scenes of redwoods flashing past the windows, as she told me how she reached the decision to move 3,000 miles away. My heart felt so full, it hurt.
• I’ve been in a huge hurry my whole life, but being young demands that you wait for some things. So, impatience and youth are at odds, hence one of my greatest inner conflicts. This is the first year that I’ve seen the wait coming to an end. The years of actually doing – not just imagining or preparing for what I will one day do – are upon me. Right now, I’m doing work that I find fascinating and fulfilling. The possibilities I see in it keep me up at night. And this is most certainly what I’ve been waiting for.
• As much as I’d like to, it seems deceitful to omit the most significant event of 2011 for me. This was the year that I had my heart broken so completely, I wasn’t sure it would heal. It would be disingenuous and ridiculous to try to capture the sum of that experience here. However, if I had to skip to the punch line, it’s this: I am proud of how I’ve healed.

Grief was somewhat of a theme for the year past. It was undeniably present in my life, and I recognized it in the faces of so many others. Even as I tally my losses, though, it’s plain to see that I have a rich life. In a year when so many people were without, I was immensely lucky to have so much. I’m counting my blessings and hoping you’ll do the same. Wishing us all a lighter and more loving 2012.

I followed the directions. I swear.

This weekend-specific and general life update comes to you in bulleted list form:

• It goes without saying, but no, I haven’t been blogging much here. And yes, I do have plans to change that soon. For real this time! I have hope. Summer is my season.
• Sweet couple days of vacation-planning, eating at familiar, favorite haunts, camera lessons and pinot grigio in this 1920s Goose Hollow studio of mine.
• We suspect not eating for 18 hours may have had something to do with this scary and unprecedented little episode: I passed out (twice) at a coffee shop on Sunday morning. Thanks to my boyfriend for enduring that with me (more consciously than I did, of course).
• Planted some basil, cilantro and chives on Sunday. I haven’t cared for any plants since I moved almost a year ago. It’s been too long.
• Speaking of living things, I really, really want a cat. Like really, really. Damn this too-small apartment and those stupid renter’s rules.
• Since I can’t have a pet, and plants are only so-so in terms of good company, I’m redecorating. It’ll be done slowly and cheaply, but it’s still pretty exciting.
• There are a lot of good writers whose work I appreciate, but I finally found a journalistic muse. I’ve been needing one for a while, and this writer came along at exactly the right time. I can’t remember feeling this inspired professionally since my favorite j-class, which I took two years ago. Two years! Fortunately, I got a lot of mileage (and still am) out of that one class. Always say yes to a class with Mike Thoele.

I had read this elsewhere before, but when this post from NPR’s Fresh Air Tumblr appeared in my Facebook newsfeed today, I was glad it did. It spurred some thoughts. Among them were these.

In one way or another, I’ve been practicing journalism since I was 14. First for my high school’s monthly newspaper, then for classes in college, some freelance, some unpaid internships at weekly newspapers, then a job at my college daily, an internship at a professional daily, and now going on 11 months at The Oregonian.

I haven’t read the stories I did as a 14-year-old recently, and although my high school work won me Oregon Student Journalist of the Year in 2006, I doubt it’s any good.

I think what was there, even in those early years, was a sense of purpose. My reporting back then, however limited it was in my breadth of sources, had lofty ambitions. I wasn’t writing my two or three stories a month purely to fulfill a class requirement. Hell, I wasn’t really doing it for the class at all. I wanted to write stories that mattered. I wanted them to capture life in the walls of Gresham High School and communicate something relatable. Something true.

So, I set out with gusto on stories about teacher union contract negotiations and students drinking vodka from water bottles in class. Some teenage journalists tackle tougher subjects. I just wanted to do the news right.

Even though I’ve been reporting all along, I realize that my time at The Oregonian has been the longest period I’ve spent at one publication as a reporter. It’s the first real chance I’ve had to settle in, and that’s a strange experience. Especially given that I don’t feel very settled at all. Something tells me that has a lot to do with Ira Glass’ musings on the youth of a creative career.

When I was in Eugene last weekend, memories swirled around in my mind like a current I couldn’t fight. I always like to reminisce about the four years I spent in Eugene, a significant portion of my life and nearly all of my adult life. But the memories grabbed me this past weekend with an urgency that I didn’t recognize. And for once, they felt far away. Eugene felt like a home that I used to have.

Among the memories, some of which I hadn’t revisited since they happened, was a woman I worked with at a domestic abuse hotline. She lived alone in a yurt on a commune without running water or electricity. Her frizzy, wild, blond ringlets bounced when she bounded in the room. She smelled strongly of horses and hay and campfire, and faintly of manure. Her hands were always dirty. She popped candy into her mouth with dirt-covered fingers.

She had met her lover on a solo journey through South America. She fell into an intense love affair with the Latino man who led her up a mountain. They married immediately, but she soon learned she couldn’t be married to his violent temper. She escaped the relationship not unscathed.

When she moved to the commune, the landowner came on to her. She distrusted him from the start: First, he was a man. Second, he had appropriated land for his own gain. Who was to say he wouldn’t do the same to her? As the story went, she rejected him, and his wounded ego never recovered. She would listen from her yurt to him yelling and fighting with the other tenants. She had a loud voice and big blue eyes and weathered skin. She was strong. Still, she feared him.

This past weekend was precious. My friend Lauren also blogged about it, and she described it as magic. That very same word was on the tip of my tongue all weekend.

Now, I’ve had a lot of good moments in love and friendship, particularly in the last year. But this past weekend was something special. It was life-affirming. One of those times when you know exactly what matters and what doesn’t.

There are a few moments that deserve posts all their own. Maybe I’ll get to those eventually. In the meantime, for posterity, here’s the quick version.

A warm wind was sweeping the town when we arrived in Sisters, Ore. The dust blowing in our eyes reminded us we weren’t in the Willamette Valley anymore. We walked all over town, discovered that everything, yes everything, is cute in Sisters, and found our future place of employment – The Nugget Newspaper, housed in a charming log cabin.

We drove down the highway and found some stunning mountain views, parked, walked along some private property and endured some evil-eye from a lot of neighbors driving with dogs in trucks.

Later, we checked into our room, which, in the middle of the Deschutes National Forest, overlooked a wooded pasture, home to some llamas and deer.

Then we ventured down the road, to see some friends who stayed in a cabin a few feet from the brewery, where we all had dinner, and a few more feet from the movie house – a barn with old-time popcorn served in brown paper bags. After a movie, we retreated to the cabin for some wine and chess, and I photographed the photographer.

And after a little more exploring of the middle of the state, we drove home, through snowy scenes and forested hills, by frozen lakes and cattle ranches. And predominantly, through wisps of soft, low-laying fog caught between patches of forest, with a yellow, late-afternoon sky backlighting a silhouetted skyline of trees.

It might have been the truest weekend I have ever known.

Blog posts about bloggers not blogging enough really bug me. The topic isn’t interesting and it’s such a widespread problem, it doesn’t really seem worth mentioning. However, there are some deeper reasons behind my blog neglect.

Some are the same old, boring reasons you’ve heard a million times: I’ve been too busy, too tired, too work-laden for creative productivity. And, as an aside, when you write for a living, sometimes extracurricular writing starts to feel less like an escape and more like work.

But here are the deeper reasons: First, I started this blog when I was a student journalist. Frankly, I felt freer then. Sure, potential employers could have been turned off by what I wrote. I could have blogged myself out of the running for a great job. But I always believed the odds were greater that my blog would appeal to a potential employer.

Now that I actually am employed, the stakes are higher. I have not only flesh-and-blood bosses who might care what I write here, but also readers and sources and coworkers. At a certain point, considering blog posts I might want to write has become daunting. More than a few times, this has really annoyed me. I want a place where I can write unedited. I want to self-publish. I want to encourage other journalists to practice some of the same transparency we demand of others.

And, perhaps above all else, I want to be human. In the last seven months here at The Oregonian, I have been struck at how difficult it is to be a human and a journalist simultaneously. It’s been even more difficult on a beat like courts, where there are two sides, winners and losers, politics, and complex concepts — justice, to name one — involved.

So, blogging as a journalist — offering a personal take on my life and work — isn’t a simple task. But I need to try. I think journalists collectively need to embrace the challenge, think critically about it and experiment until we find what works. To be fair, journalists have been practicing this dance of being a professional while being a person for a long time. Before the digital era, they probably did it more privately. But times have changed. We have tools at our fingertips. We have the luxury of self-publishing anytime we want. One blogger’s opinion: We need to take advantage of this era.

In an effort to remedy my own blog neglect, I’m first admitting that I have a problem. Next, I’m setting a goal. I want to blog once a week. I can’t promise that each week I’ll produce meaty, soul-stirring material. But I will produce something that gets at my original mission: Something that reveals who I am, who I meet and what I’m thinking about.

2010 was, for me, a year of great happiness punctuated by tragic little moments of growing pains and transition.

The winter of last year brought me job opportunities and falling in love.

In the spring came graduation, leaving Eugene and a lot more love.

The summer was so much newness: A new job, a new city, living with friends, Skype and loving on the weekends.

In the fall, I moved to my own place, settled in at work, worried about relationships that weren’t mine and learned a lot about what’s most important.

Of all the things I learned in 2010, I think one of the best was finally learning to live in the moment. How could I not when there were so many moments of joy? Walking home in torrential downpours after late nights at the Emerald; the entire Italian population of Portland, from toddlers to elders, dancing at Pioneer Courthouse Square on a warm night in August; creative cooking with Lauren; long talks about journalism; four-way video-chatting; falling asleep to rain; waking up to rain; sitting on a porch, watching the rain; so many nights at McMenamins; so many burritos.

2010 was the year that I lived and I learned to immerse myself in the moments that I didn’t want to end. That is happiness.

All this is not to say that 2010 didn’t present its challenges. Oh, to the contrary. I said more goodbyes than I care to remember. I have grown truly sick of goodbyes. And, in spite of everything, I still spent too much time worrying about the future and things I can’t control.

At the end of 2009, I wrote, “a year ago I could not have foreseen all the great stuff that 2009 had in store. And with that, I’m going to welcome the unknown with all the blind optimism I can muster.” The same can be said of 2010, but it would be a magnanimous understatement.

So, onward, 2011. I can’t wait to see what you’ve got.

You plan for your relocation to Peacock Lane, aspiring to dazzle the whole damn town with your legendary holiday lighting display. You wouldn’t mind wilting your neighbors’ will to compete either.

You dance in the kitchen, freak dancing like kids at a middle school dance to the wrong music. And later, you reinvent the box step, proving some ballroom lessons couldn’t hurt.

You make a late dinner Emily’s way: no recipe, no measuring, just taste, with cider in a fancy glass.

You cry and laugh interchangeably, simultaneously, when a moment of tears turns into a fit of giggling because the source of your sadness is so much happiness.

You relive the past, telling two sides of the same story, revealing details that until now were secrets.

You stave off morning by putting off sleep, baiting a new day to end a perfect yesterday.

When I was little, my dreams were fueled by drives through downtown Portland at night. I lived east of the Willamette, and crossing the bridge into downtown was all it took. The neon lights glinting off the water, the insides of buildings alit, the tree-lined streets glowing with strung white lights. These lights suggested life in the bustling city, bursting from warm restaurants and bars on cold, rainy nights. They were a promise of something bigger awaiting me at the end of my quiet childhood.

When I was little, I told myself I’d live downtown one day.

As adulthood edged nearer, I started believing I might never live in Portland again. After college, the job market could have tossed me far from my hometown and my life might have taken root there. And it still could. But for the moment, I am back in Portland. And, fulfilling a promise to the young dreamer within, I live downtown.

But I find myself disenchanted more often than not.

The problem is that I’m homesick. Not for a place, but for a person. I’m homesick for the person who sees me in the light that I believe truest. I used to think that home was a place where you kept your precious belongings, watered some plants, gave them names, put up curtains and occasionally slept. So, what happens when you have that place, in the city, where the lights are, where you dreamed of living, and it doesn’t feel like home? In my case, I concede that perhaps it takes more of a heart to make a home than stuff. And a lot of my heart is here, but not all.

So, this isn’t home just yet. It’s not Portland’s fault.

The city lights excited me as a kid. Now they comfort me. They are a reminder that dreams come true, that bigger and better always lies ahead, and that life has more little ironies and twists up its sleeves than I could ever imagine. I can’t see the future, and I don’t know where it will take me. But I know I have some more dreams to fulfill before I’m done.