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Well at least I made it back here before a year passed, or before I forgot about this blog and it became one of the many things I started and never followed through on! Hello again. My new job had a lot of getting used to, particularly with the hours and the physicality – more varied hours, a lot more walking, and a lot of stairs! I think I’ve finally adjusted and can add my personal enrichment activities back into my life.

I’ve taken up some light gardening this past year. I decided to try my had at a few succulents, since my aloe plant I was gifted a little over a year ago has grown exponentially, produced five babies (a sixth one is coming), and now has a flower bud! I didn’t even know aloe plants flowered. I do not consider myself a good gardener by any means. I’ve done a lot of plants dirty. I over-watered an aloe plant to death, some chrysanthemums I bought, and a celery plant my parents gave me were eaten by aphids, and also I’ve forgotten to water too many Trader Joe’s basil plants to count. I also did kill one of the succulents I just got a few months ago. Oops. Despite all my previous failures, I have a few succulents that are doing okay (I think), and one really thriving aloe.

Coming to the cusp of 10 years of officially being an “adult” came with more than a few growing pains. There were many times I felt like a failure: not pursuing a career in my field and still paying off student loans, not getting to a position I originally wanted at work, not traveling enough, not going back to school, not having a husband or a family, not following through with this blog, etc. I guess I found that you kind of spend your 20s trying to figure out life, and learning to measure your growth and value when you’re no longer being graded.

Growing these plants reminds me to be a little easier on myself when it comes to failure. I’m trying to look at past experiences as opportunities for growth, rather than measurements of self-worth. I’m trying to be patient with myself, and remember that I have a whole life still ahead of me to figure things out. I’m also trying hard to be grateful for the good things I have and to celebrate successes, however small. Sometimes you drown, sometimes you break, sometimes you get attacked by aphids, but with the right environment, a little care, effort, and patience you might just grow into something beautiful.

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The middle seems like a strange place to start. The Summer Solstice, “Midsummer” was a few days ago. The Bay Area is in the middle of another heatwave. My current company is in the middle of a transition. I’m somewhere in the middle of Silicon Valley, in the middle of my “prime” years, sitting in the middle of an air-conditioned cafe. Here, in the middle is where I’ve decided to begin.

We tend to put so much emphasis on when we begin, than the act of beginning. Our new diet and exercise plan begins with our New Year’s resolutions. We clean out our closets in the Spring for a fresh start. Maybe the sense of collective transition makes accepting change more bearable, or maybe we’ll feel better if our resolutions fall through. Then when we end up in the proverbial hamster wheel waiting for the “right time” to jump off, we join the other would-be resolutioners seeing another year come and go, secure in the stability of an invariable life. That’s where I found myself this year, in the middle of 2019 – in the middle of a better self-identity, in the middle of a job I loved, somewhere in the middle of making it a career. If not for several events this year that became the motivating factors for change in my life, I might not have asked the critical question, “What do I really want?” Insert Ryan Gosling meme here. And while I don’t necessarily believe in fate, I do think we’re brought to the crossroads at serendipitous times.

I never really made a “5-year-plan”. I always plugged myself into a pipeline, trusted the process, and worked hard to get to where I wanted to be. In my year-end reflections, I think about the ways I’ve grown or changed, what stayed the same, and the challenges I’ve overcome. I gain a sense of accomplishment knowing I’m not 100% the same person I was the year before. But I don’t think I’ve ever asked myself what I really wanted for my life and career, and I was always afraid of putting things in motion due to the timing, the state of my emotional stability, and financial security. Caught in the whirlwind of adulting, and creatively burnt out from college, I forgot about the parts of myself that were missing. I missed having a creative outlet to express myself. I missed having a space sharing my thoughts and voice. I missed writing.

My boss once told me that I can be like an octopus (or I suppose in my case a squid), trying to do many things at once and waffling about. That’s certainly true of trying to organize my thoughts around my many passions. Some days I’m interested in the variety of the human experience, some days I want to share my favorite new outfit or food, and some days I want to write about how they all intersect. Maybe committing to a blog will provide the structure and outlet I’m searching for.

So here I am beginning again, resurrecting my dormant passion for writing and other media (who knows, maybe you’ll catch a karaoke cover from me). I hope you’ll enjoy the ride with me.