2018

It’s that time of year again where I update this old crusty thing of a “blog.” Oddly enough one of my goals this year was to blog weekly, but that was an utter disaster. So next year I am going to aim for weekly. Until then, this is my yearly update.

As I read back on old posts I’m a bit disheartened to see that every post starts with “This year was hard” or “This month was hard” or “Being this age is hard.” While 2017 was an exceptionally challenging year, the rest of the moments I am reflecting on were challenging, but doable. All of this being said, I am glad to say that 2018 had its challenges, but I can not justify myself in saying that it was hard. In a lot of ways, this past year was boring. I was stuck in the monotony of being a full time employee, a part time Grad student, and an intern leaving little time for spontaneity. I tried to do a video a day this year, but decided that my friends would probably not want to see 300 videos of me reading. While I could be frustrated by this boredom, I can sit with it knowing that it is temporary and sooner than I will expect, I will have my life back and will be able to do more things that I love.

Much of 2018 was spent working on discipline. Days and weeks and months were spent working on the negative thoughts that 2017 created and while they are not all gone, they don’t have the control they had last November which is pretty amazing. I have my moments where I turn into a ball of anxiety and don’t know what to do, but they are far less frequent than they used to be.  Next year I hope to continue that trend.

I’m leaving this year knowing that I am ok. I am ok by myself and I can do it by myself. While I am proud of myself for this self assuredness I now want to start working on trusting other people again. Just because I can do it all myself does not mean that I have to.

2018 was a good, simple year. A younger me would have hated me for saying that, but by going back to focusing on the basics, I’ll be able to handle the bigger things. For 2019, I’m going to focus on that. Hopefully I’ll check in before it’s over.