Nowhere to Go But Up: Turning 32
Tomorrow, I blow the candles out, rolling into the big 3-2. Since it’s on a Tuesday this year, and I am no longer a kid on summer break who can celebrate mid-week, I celebrated this weekend. My fiancé rented a neighborhood pool for a few hours, we ate pizza and played Lorcana with our friends, then I fell asleep on the couch by 11pm after I got them all to watch The Incredibles for me. It was a good weekend. I took today (Monday) off because I simply could not return to work like normal after all the excitement (kind of serious, I just did not want to go back to work yet.) So what did I get up to today between laundry loads and finishing off the second season of The Four Seasons? I sat with my thought for a bit.
And after I spent some time thinking about how I am getting too old to be dunking in a poolside game of H.O.R.S.E. (the hoop was in the shallow end of the pool and I forgot there was steps just to the side of the hoop until I was falling back into the water- knee first into the first step) I got an idea… instead of actively stressing about where I am in my life, or how badly the struggle has been lately, how about I write about some of the great things I have accomplished this year. This way in the future, I can look back at this post and remember a bit more about my life from this time. So without further ado…
Highlights on Roy’s thirty-first year:
-I have finally perfected at-home coffee, I have been looking for that answer for as long as I’ve been drinking coffee.
-I opened my crochet booth.
-I have learned a ton of new stuff and completed more crochet projects this year than I ever have. 3 Blankets: (Moss blanket and my niece and nephews Christmas blankets), multiple scarves, I have lost count of all the amigurumi I have done.
-I slowly started coming out of my shell personality/socially wise. This alone is a big step.
-I have not lost a ton of weight, but I feel like I have finally figured out a good eating system. Hitting a high protein goal and managing to stay in a calorie deficit.
I am sure there are a few things here and there that I missed… But in the grand scheme of things, 31 definitely was not my best year. I think this was very much a survival year. Meaning that I may not have done a lot to move forward but I did what I needed to do to crawl to the next day, so I am considering that a win.
For the record- I started writing this around Noon and stopped so I could focus on laundry (and finishing The Four Seasons). But I kind of stewed on it while I was finishing stuff up around the house (and moving on to starting Emily in Paris). This may have not been a poster board year with a ton of milestones but that's okay. And maybe it's the birthday-eve emotions talking but isn't it a win that I am still pushing on? I feel like for the longest time, I have been chasing down the need to have my parents (or anyone around me) tell me they were proud of me on a daily basis.... At some point this year I officially stopped caring about that. Not because I feel like I finally "won" but more so because I finally realized that validation from an outside source is great, but if you don't have internal validation then what is all of this for? I'm not there yet, but for the first time in maybe my whole life I have realized that that is the real goal here. I don't need to give a shit about what other people or even my family think about me... At the end of the day the only person's opinion that matters is my own. I need to be able to be comfortable with and be able to love myself. And I am not there yet, but I have finally identified that and I am working in the right direction I feel like. For the first time in .... ever, I think I am finally starting to get it.
Instead of writing out a series of goals for 32, I’m just going to say I am going to strive to be a little bit better every day. Whether that be mentally or physically, I am just going to continue to push myself out of my shell and try to work towards a better version of myself. I have a feeling that I am going to look back on this next year around this time and see how far I have come and be extremely proud of myself. After all, there is nowhere to go but up, right?