Another Inch Taller

On March 4, 2015, I wrote my first blog post on this website.

I had just graduated from college a few months before, was still living in my college town, only worked eight hours a week, and felt like my whole life was falling apart—over the next few months, I really saw it crumble. I needed something to do; a creative safe spot; somewhere to look for light.

So I thought, fuck it. I'm just going to make a website.

I started out trying to write a "themed" blog. I'll write listicles; I'll write about skincare; I'll write about fitness; I'll write about dating. I'd write a few silly articles that didn't mean anything to me, didn't take more than ten minutes to write and send out. I was living this life of losing friendships, and losing job opportunities. Losing God, losing a boy, losing my mind.

But I'm not going to write about that, I told myself.

And after a few failed attempts of making a blog run for the purpose of entertainment, I decided, I'm just not going to write at all.

I deleted the posts that didn't matter, only leaving my first ever blog post, written on March 4, 2015, sitting on an abandoned website with my name as its domain. The post was about starting a new chapter of my life; one I promised to write about, even though the thought of that made my stomach queasy and my palms shake.

I've always been a very private person. It took me a year to tell my best friend details about my first relationship, takes me months before I tell my mom about a fight I had with a friend, and I don't tell anyone—boyfriends, best friends, or family members—about the personal projects I work on. So I think a lot of them were confused when, somewhere along the way, I came back to this blog to write about things I hardly talked about. About the losing—the boy, the jobs, the 4 years of classes and friendships I could never go back to. About the waiting—for purpose, for excitement, for a fresh start. About the finding—of the blue eyed boy, the job I'd been dreaming about, the apartment in the city where I knew my fresh start was ready for me to take.

I've spent the last year of my life in vastly different states of mind; three different cities, five different jobs, one hundred different life plans. And this blog has reflected all the different steps I decided to take. Every different lesson I learned about being a better friend, a better leader, a better listener, and a better human. Every different time I've failed at being better at any of those things.

And every time I write about those lessons, those failures, those moments of terror or moments of bliss, I feel like a five-year-old marking pencil on the wall to see how much he's grown. That's why I stay here, and I stay honest, and I keep writing things that sometimes make me queasy and sometimes make my palms shake before hitting Publish.

Another inch, and another inch, and another inch taller.

So I just wanted to take a moment to say happy birthday to this little corner of the Internet that has been a sweet blessing for me to turn to over the last 12 months. I can only hope that by next March I'll see how many inches taller 2016 makes me.