This is where I will be when 2013 rolls in for trip #10/12.

Ringing in the new year in Las Vegas with tens and thousands of other people, I counted down to 2012 excited to see where the next 12 months would take me. Little did I know that it would take me back to Vegas nine times in 8 months.

I jokingly made a goal to go to Vegas once a month for the entire year, and when the clock strikes midnight tonight, I will be two trips short of the goal. Impressive for a gal that had only been to Vegas a handful of times in the last thirty plus years.

The first question people usually ask me is, “Why do you love Vegas so much??” It’s not that I love gambling, though my game is Blackjack. And it’s not the wild partying and debauchery, although I’ve had quite a few crazy tales that shall remain locked safely in the vaults of Vegas memories. It’s not the shopping or the food or the lights or the sounds. I think what I love about Vegas encompasses all of that, but what I absolutely love about Vegas is the freedom. People are there to have fun and there are NO JUDGEMENTS. Living a good number of my life under the tyranny of rules and the critical judgements of the people I surrounded myself with, I cowered and conformed to what I thought would make me a better person and make people like and accept me. Vegas is the polar opposite of everything I grew up trying to live up to and found absolutely fake and empty.

It’s weird to think that a placed dubbed, “Sin City,” can be one of the most integral parts of my learning about who I am and how to be me in the last 15 months. And I can almost hear some of the people from my past tsk-ing with harsh condemnation now…