The one experience that I feel most shaped my trajectory in the last year was taking a wood turning class.  I enrolled in a wood turning class at Victory Parkway this Spring.  I wasn’t sure what to expect but knew that I had done a little bit of it in high school and really enjoyed it.  At the time I did not pursue it further due to time constraints and not having access to a lathe outside of class.
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When I showed up to class, the instructor John talked about turning and how if we wanted to delve deeper into it, there was a wood turning guild that we could join that would have open shops and classes that we could use as an opportunity for more time to work.  Later that week I went to the first thing held by them and loved it.  It was such a great opportunity to have a place where I could go and destress and forget everything that was going on with life.  While there I was there, one of the members, Mary Carol, was hosting a wood burning mini class.  Attending that made me realize how much I enjoyed pyrography and the artistic nature of that.  I ended up taking another class in it and loving it so much that Mary Carol let me borrow a wood burning unit to work with.   This allowed me to make sure that this was something that I wanted to invest in. 
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This class shaped my trajectory as I found a new and probably lifelong hobby along with a group that will help me succeed.  My goals for next year include taking two different wood working classes, one each semester, at Blue Ash to figure out what other types of wood working I might be interested in.  In the Fall I will be taking the wood crafts class, and the Spring I hope to either take the second wood crafts class, as it covers different techniques, or a furniture construction class.  Additionally, I plan on attending the evening wood turning classes offered at the Wood Turning Guild.  With that, I hope to attend the monthly pyrography get togethers.  Finally, I hope to be able to take some of the day long classes offered through the Wood Turning Guild, as they will help me both develop the skills I already have and expand into ones I don’t.  It was a unique experience that I was lucky to have.