Ten years can bring plenty of change.

On December 31, 1999, I was in my second year of law school. I only had one degree to my name, and I'd never lived more than 30 minutes from the house in which I'd grown up. Since then, I finished law school, passed the bar exam, worked briefly as a public defender, and earned a Masters degree in library science. I lived in Las Vegas for three years, Connecticut for 15 months and moved to Los Angeles a little over a year ago.

Then, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer in Louisville. Now, I'm a librarian in Los Angeles.

In 1999, the only way you could call me was on the land line in my apartment. I've had 4 different cell phones since then. I use my current phone for texting, gaming, reading, email, guitar tuning, calorie counting and waking me up in the morning.

Ten years ago I'd lost contact with everyone from my high school class. I'm now Facebook friends with 56 of those classmates.

Before the year 2000 I had never flown on an airplane and had only been to 10 U.S. states. During a one week stretch in 2008, I drove through 13 states, and I've now been to 32 overall. I'm a Silver Preferred frequent flyer on U.S. Airways.

This barely skims the surface of what's changed for me in the last decade, but it's proof that a life can be changed drastically in a short period of time if you aren't satisfied with its direction.

Happy New Year!