Every year brings new experiences, new challenges and most importantly new room to grow. 2016 brought a lot of that for me. I started the year knowing what I wanted to get out of the year but not expecting what would happen. I always imagined doing great things and being able to say I did this or that and I never realized those things would actually happen to me. But I had a lot of fears going into 2016 so I decided my new years' resolution would revolve around that.
2016 was great. I overcame a lot of personal struggles, realized what I want to do with the rest of my life and found tons more that I love. But it also sucked. Times got hard, my personal struggles went back and forth and people are, you know, people. I saw amazing films and listened to amazing songs but some of my favorite icons passed away. I tried new foods, which is a big deal, and made pretty big decisions about my future. For as many personal successes as I had, I let myself down quite a bit too. As Kylie Jenner predicted, I would truly call 2016 the year of "realizing things."
I went to college knowing what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I've always considered myself a writer. I always liked writing because of the characters you created, whether fictional or nonfictional. It was always about the storytelling and being able to use your voice to project something for people to see. Fast forward to October 31, 2016 when I saw Hillary Clinton. I had an epiphany, y'all. I love politics. I love seeing people being passionate about issues. I love people being able to use their voices to fight for what they believe in. Almost for the same reasons as I love writing (you know where this is going don't you?). That day I realized I needed to tell real stories from real people and politics could be my way of doing that. Crazy stuff. I won't get into the specifics. But I was only on a high for like a week after that because we all know what happened the week after. That doesn't deserve a spot on this post though.
Realizing what I actually, specifically wanted to do for the rest of my life fostered this kind of ambition. All of a sudden my dreams weren't just dreams, they were going to be reality, and I could conquer anything I wanted to. The cheesy things they tell you in movies and the pins you see on Pinterest made sense all of a sudden.
I furthered my leaderships skills with positions in organizations and to know that people believe in you and your talents is really an honor. You can sit by yourself and decide that you're great but you can't really be great until you go after what you want. I realized that I had skills and I also realized that other people will see them if I make them see them (This is where the new years' resolution comes back into play.)
I realized that there isn't time to waste, I can't sit around waiting for opportunities to fall in my lap, if I wanted things I needed to take them. But to do so I'd have to be unafraid and I'd have to forget the voices in the back of my head that told me I could keep holding off.
So that's what I did. I knew what I loved and what I wanted to do and what I believed in so I took all of those things and built myself up. I knew all of these things about myself and it was up to me to make sure everyone else did too. If 2016 was the year of realizing things, 2017 will be the year of putting things into action.
That's the resolution for 2017. To me, it's simple. It's easy to decide you're going to be unafraid, hard to make your actions mimic your thoughts and harder to continue doing so. But if I had to sum up what 2016 has taught me, it's this; you're as good as you want to be, you can do whatever you put your mind to and there's nothing wrong with encountering a few bumps along the way. 2016 was the best year of my life, but was it everything I wanted it to be? Definitely not.
But that's what next year is for.
