ten years.

ten years ago i made the resolution to read 30 books in the year 2013.

at the time, i was a senior in high school, obsessed with booktube videos and desperately trying to get myself to read the up and coming YA books that were starting to come out. i had never really accomplished any of my resolutions in previous years, and i’d never really been driven enough to set an attainable goal.

that one decision ended up changing the course of the next decade of my life.

people shit on resolutions all the time. they always list off reasons why they don’t work, they aren’t necessary, why new year’s day is just a date on the calendar. but the truth is, i wouldn’t be here if not for my resolutions. so much of who i am today and where i’ve ended up is because a younger, braver me decided that she wanted to be better. it’s a joy for me to come up with resolutions because i know that regardless of how much i fail, i know that the process will force me to become someone new.

it’s crazy to me that it’ll be ten years since 2013 because that year felt monumental to me. that year started a chain reaction of changes in my life — it was the year i moved to nashville, the year i started my youtube channel, the year i saw taylor swift in concert for the first time — and i feel such a similar energy within myself as i enter into this new year. part of what made 2013 so successful to me was that my intentions came from a place of joy and passion. i didn’t want to impress people or do something big and flashy, i just really wanted to read more. and in the end, it became so much bigger than that.

i haven’t felt excited for new year since before the pandemic. in the past few years, i’ve felt trapped and unmoored and full of grief. and for a long time i was afraid that i lost the part of me that seemed so vibrant in my early twenties: the version of me that was driven and ambitious. the truth is that my internal motivations the past few years have solely been to stay alive. that’s a little dramatic, but one of my goals for 2022 was to focus on eating three solid meals a day. (mission accomplished, by the way.) nothing’s perfect, life’s still hard, but it has made me realize just how much of myself i locked away in order to survive.

i took a lot of time this year to reflect on where i’m at, to look inward and see what changes need to be made, and a lot of my priorities and dreams have shifted. i’m finally at a place where i don’t feel (as much) grief about that. a lot of the things that felt like sacrifices last year now feel like blessings. a lot of the missed opportunities are now redirections towards things that i never even realized i wanted to pursue. i spent a lot of my early twenties thinking i understood myself and the world, but as i get older i have realized that everything they say is true: life is long and humans are fickle and everything you think you want will change. and that’s okay.

this year i find myself gravitating towards things that once felt unattainable. not because i want to conquer the challenges of my youth, but because i’m finally at place in my life that i can pursue these dreams from a healthy perspective. because i am finally capable of achieve things that seemed like distant daydreams. it doesn’t sound so ridiculous to pursue a year of primarily film photography, to physically train my body through yoga and rock climbing, to study german and finnish, to read all of les miserables.

in some ways, these are all goals that i had in 2013. it’s funny how our biggest dreams find a way of coming back to us, even when we thought we had to give them up. the difference now is that i have the life experience to follow through on these things and pursue them for the right reasons. which means a higher success rate. which means truthfully, regardless of how successful any of those resolutions are, i can’t lose. because i’m pursuing a better version of myself and every day i walk closer to that goal.

these pandemic years have given me ample time to think about aging, about how i’m approaching thirty and suddenly teenagers seem incredibly young and my parents are incredibly old. i’ve spent hours looking through old photographs, trying to remember who i was and who i’ve been and who i wanted to be. and most of the time aging does terrify me (i’m at that fun phase where i’m nervous about the wrinkles on my forehead), but i think i understand now that it doesn’t have to be a scary thing.

aging is a gift. growing old, changing into a million iterations of yourself is a blessing. and if i’m running out of time (very, very slowly), then there’s no reason i should waste it by not pursuing the things that set my soul on fire. i’ve finally realized that a lot of the chains that were holding me back in high school and college have fallen away. a lot of the harmful, unhealthy thoughts i had in my teenage years are finally gone and i don’t have those burdens anymore. i’m free to embrace who i am and who i am becoming and isn’t that a beautiful thing?

what better way to embrace the old me than by echoing her wishes and doing all the things she never thought she could do?