Nice to see you again. Follow me, @SydneyOwen. Thanks for being here!
Apparently my count was off. I was off by one freakin’ tweet. My 10,000th tweet actually happened on 10,001 so now I’m rectifying my error with my Top Ten Favorite Moments of 2009. Yeah yeah I know 2009 isn’t over yet, and there’s bound to be some great moments in the next couple weeks, but whatever. Top Ten, READY GO!
These are in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER (because there’s no way I could weight them by awesomeness, because it’s hard enough to pick only 10 moments out of this amazing year I had):
10. Walking out of Charley’s Steakhouse after working the Saturday before the Super Bowl. WE WERE SLAMMED. That night was historical. Seriously – I was working the well and I had servers waiting for tickets, customers lining up to buy drinks from me, it was a shit show. But one of the BEST NIGHTS of my bartending career – not just because we killed it, but because we had SO MUCH FUN.
9. Finding myself at SXSW. Geek is cool. And I was surrounded by people that made me think. And that’s when I discovered that I like thinking. And I’m kinda good at it.
8. Meeting fantastic people at SXSW that have turned into some of my closest friends. Seriously, if I gave each person their own “Top 10″ thing I’d be at around at least 15. So here’s to Ben, Ryan, Nisha, Elysa, Bryan, Holly, Carly, and the countless number of business cards I picked up and still have. Thank you.
7. Meeting two life-changing mentors. But I’d be cheating if I didn’t give two of the people who have changed my life their own little bullet. Thank you Adam and Aaron for guiding me through the world post-college and personally. You guys have NO IDEA how much you’ve helped me. Okay you probably do. But regardless – thank you.
6. Having my tweetup before I moved to Chicago with Tim, Scott and John. I knew I would love Chicago – but I had no idea how friendly the city was. Tim and I tried to connect at SXSW but just couldn’t make it happen. Scott was a nice surprise – he didn’t RSVP, he just showed up. And John is now my emergency contact since we’re work neighbors. So that panned out well for me.
5. Getting hired at Weber Shandwick. This was pretty much the culmination of all of the great things I had learned along the way, having TREMENDOUS support from my family (which was the hardest part of the move, being SO FREAKING FAR AWAY) and really just kicking ass. I had a good feeling going into this that it would all work out. “Work hard, keep learning, and the rest will take care of itself.” And it did. Thank you. 
And if it weren’t for Weber Shandwick, I wouldn’t have met Lauren – who is PRETTY MUCH MY TWIN and my Chicago bestie – so double kudos to moving to Chicago for Weber Shandwick and coming out of the internship with a job and a best friend. HOLLER! (And again, major ups to my family for telling me YES I CAN every step of the way. You guys are my whole wide world.)
4. Graduating from USF. Single-handedly one of the greatest achievements of my lifetime. I can’t believe that the first semester I’m out of college is almost over – it feels so weird to not be housed up in the library/Starbucks/Panera getting my study on for finals, but I’ll take it. GO BULLS!
3. My movie kiss. The scene: Cool Chicago summer night, steady rain. Not that spray-rain that’s annoying, but enough to be actual rain, without soaking you to the bone. Feel me? Okay. So it’s raining. Friend of mine is walking me home (because he’d feel horrible if I was murdered on my way home alone) and we stop at the corner by my building and wait for the light. And then magic happens. The most incredible “you-wish-you-were-cast-on-the-Notebook-or-something-similar” type of kiss. It’s raining. We’re kissing. Like he’s-holding-my-face-in-his-hands-like-they-do-in-every-good-kissing-scene kissing. Did I mention it’s raining? We part so I can cross the street and I almost get hit by a car (okay not really). Resume magic. Light changes – AND SCENE. That was it. I went into my building, did a happy dance once I cleared the windows (similar to Love Actually) and that was that. ::heavy sigh:: And it could be the best story of “did that really happen?” one, because it was so something you’d see in a movie and two, we are sarcastic-in-a-borderline-flirtatious-way-yet-sometimes-fight-like-siblings-and-kinda-like-BFF’s. LOVE IT.
2. Launching the redesign and Sydney: Unfiltered. For anyone who has been reading since before October when I relaunched this beast – you know how much things have changed around here. I originally started blogging about social media and PR and quickly realized though I was learning a lot, I was by no means an authority on the topic. So then I started writing about all the cool things I was learning in my internship and then I started feeling bad when I wanted to write about things like #3 and how that didn’t fit into my niche. So then, with the help of the amazingly talented and INCREDIBLY beautiful Jamie Varon, I turned up the awesome and came out with Unfiltered. And if you’re reading this now, you know how different that is.
1. Connecting with everyone here. Seriously, in the past couple months, things have done a complete 180 for me blog-wise. Though it may not be as Unfiltered as Nicole or Jamie or David (language wise), you really truly are seeing a side of me that is the most raw I’ve ever gotten with anyone, especially with myself. So thanks for being a part of the journey. Meeting people like Mari (not as a result of this blog but whatever), Derek, and hopefully Jamie, Jenny, Nicole, Doniree, David, Sam, etc (just to name a few) through this little bloggy blog is definitely one of the most rewarding experiences of 2009. So really, thank you for being here.
What are some of your favorite moments of 2009?