2021 Wrap Up

Since I was a child, I have obsessively kept a diary. If you've ever spoken to me, I can guarantee your name, and at least one fun fact about you has made it into one of my yearly diaries. So when I picked out my 2021 diary, I chose to go with a book with a pastel green color. But I swear it's cuter than that description. I picked that pastel green diary because, on a store shelf filled with dozens of options, it stood proudly saying, "choose me for who I am." I immediately felt that I, too, had some pastel green in my essence.

2021 is the year that I grew up and lived the phrase "choose me for who I am." At the start of 2021, I was 21 years old, putting in over 40+ hour work weeks at my animal care job, taking the last 14 hours of my undergraduate degree, freshly engaged to the love of my life. All while running my business and staring at the world with nothing but hope. In fact, the opening entry of my diary has the phrase "big things are coming my way. I can feel it." But, this year, like many things in life, was not what I was expecting.

The day that I got engaged to the love of my life.

It was in the middle of 2021, and on the outside, my life looked amazing, but I was miserable. I was in a situation where people were trying to paint over my pastel green self. I was eating fast food every day. Not doing my school work. To put it frankly, I simply did not have the time in the day to do everything that I wanted it to do. So I finally had to choose between how I was living and how I wanted to live. Did I want to stay overworked, exhausted, failing classes, isolated? Or did I want to travel, graduate from college, and be with my Fiancé?

Here's a hint on my decision. Since March, I've traveled to five different states and once internationally. I graduated from Texas A&M University with a B. A in History, a minor in Religious Studies, and a language focus in Arabic. I moved in with my Fiancé, and we are figuring this whole adult thing together.

Graduation Day Spring 2021.

Since my decision, life hasn't just been sunshine. The truth is I still have days where I'm not proud of my pastel green. I have days where Panoramic Ocean does not make a single sale, and I begin to question it all. I have days where I'm feeling so alone, I'll scream into my pillow. Yet, I know that all these experiences have influenced me. These are the core memories that develop how I am as a person.

2021 you have made me grow up. You have made me fight for my dreams. You have made me outgrow other dreams. You have solidified some of the strongest friendships and torn down the weakest. You made me someone who will pick love over and over again. And more importantly, you made me face my fear of change head-on.

2022 I look forward to meeting you.