New Year, New Me? Nah.
Happy New Year Everyone!
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sit down to write and boy, oh boy has my life been a tumultuous ocean of change and emotions. I know I’m a little late to the 2020 reflection party but it’s been nice to take a couple of days to relax, enjoy time with my immediate family and really acknowledge my growth over the past year.
2020 was a challenging year for all of us, and it will be one I remember whether I want to or not! For me, it held some of my highest highs and lowest lows: I started the year feeling like I was on top of the world and untouchable, followed by a seemingly never-ending drop, plummeting into a place where I was forced to meet face-to-face with some of the worst parts of myself, then found an amazing support system that helped me build myself back up and managed to end the year feeling better and more grounded than I ever have before.
If you’ve followed my social media for a while or have read my previous blog posts, you know that I love traveling, spent a year backpacking through Europe, and planned to continue traveling after a short visit back to the US. Well… little things at work paired with Wildfires in Australia as well as a new relationship caused me to push my trip back a month, and then another, and then… COVID hit. So whether I liked it or not, the US was home base for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, the relationship didn’t last much longer after the pandemic started and my flight had been canceled just 2 days before I was scheduled to fly out. Little did I know, the breakup would lead down a slippery slope of gaslighting, betrayal, and manipulation that would cause me to question everything I thought I knew about myself. By this point, I really had no choice but to re-establish roots in LA, which is the last thing I ever saw myself doing.
Anyway, finding myself in a position where everything I had done and planned to be able to take a major step in the direction I wanted my life to go in be completely taken away—it crushed me. Travel had defined my life so fully that without that, I didn’t really know who I was. And to think I sacrificed it for someone else… I just felt disappointed in myself and, quite frankly, I saw that I was becoming someone I didn’t recognize and truly did not like. I quickly found myself in a dark place reminiscent of times from my younger years.
After a few months of struggling to climb out of this funk and working hard to be able to adjust to the idea of calling LA home, things finally started to fall into place; I signed a lease on a new apartment, started a better position at work, I started to actually accumulate things beyond what fits into a backpack, I bought a car and actually found myself having a pretty great circle of the most supportive friends and actually being OK with having that circle expand. And to top it all off, I was introduced to Jiu-Jitsu; a sport I have come to love and, let me tell you, I am HOOKED! Talk about some aggressive cuddling haha
Allowing myself to indulge in all the good things coming into my life and really leaning into the support these new friendships have offered while also doing my own work to actively explore and understand that space between my ears, I have never felt so…grounded. I make an effort to live every day with more intention and have gathered the courage to explore possibilities I had given up on in the past due to fear or feelings of inadequacy.
Yes, travel is still a huge love of mine and yes, it is still true that backpacking opened me up to new possibilities and a new perspective of how life and how to live life with more purpose and intention—all the things I said I’ve learned from this past year. But life isn’t linear and sometimes you lose yourself and need to be guided back after you’ve strayed away, sometimes even coming back with new eyes and a new perspective to see things more vividly.
I had been so focused on the things and friendships I’d lost for so long, not even noticing that so much good had replaced it. I was so busy living for other people that I had forgotten what it even was I wanted for myself. I was so lost trying to scour the world to find a place that feels like home, not realizing that home can be wherever my heart feels happy.
2020 may have been a shit show, but it’s forced me to make some long-awaited adjustments and really get in tune with who I am as a person and who I want to be, and I’d like to think that everything turned out for the best.
So, no, I’m not presenting a new me with a new outlook on life for the new year and new goals of who I want to portray in 2021. For me, it's just a marker to celebrate the growth I’ve experienced and the growth I hope to continue in this new year because I’m pretty damn proud of the person I am today! New Year, same me!
Here’s to 2021 🥂May it be filled with lots more growth and adventure!
