2014, Come at Me Bro.

It’s four whole days into a new year and I finally have a little perspective on my last year in the world.

I graduated college. I traveled 3,000 miles across the Western coast of America with my best friend. I moved into my first one bedroom apartment alone. I was given my first promotion at work. I fell in love and I broke a couple hearts at the same time. I finally shed some of the anxiety and stress that was haunting me daily last year, so much so that most of the people in my life describe my default mood as ‘ridiculously happy’. I went to Montreal, Canada for a couple days. I fulfilled my college goal of being the Creative Director for our university advertising team. I finally got a cat. I grew/am growing my hair out. And even though I didn’t get to travel outside North America this year, I was still able to host a few traveling Europeans on my couch, fulfilling my cultural thirst.

Overall, 2013 was a wonderful year.

Just a refresher, I posted this blog almost a year ago and outlined what I wanted to achieve in 2013. Below are the resolutions I made to myself last year:

Treat others how you want to be treated.
Don’t let others define your happiness.
Start believing that everything will work out and stop stressing about what could happen.
Have the courage to trust myself and be confident in myself. Commit to actions that push me forward, instead of holding me back.
Be happy and healthy.

I wrote these down on the very first page of my journal I bought and looked at them fairly frequently, enough so that I consciously kept to my goals throughout the year. Daily, I challenged myself and for the first time I’ve been able to clearly look back and say that I actually stayed true to my resolutions for the most part.

In 2014 I want to continue with these same resolutions and building a foundation for a better life for myself and those who interact with me on a daily basis. I’m challenging myself to write down one thing that makes me happy each day, whether it’s something small like drinking coffee in my sun-filled living room while listening to reggae or if it is a wonderful memory that I’ll always remember like dancing in the new year to my favorite band and pulling a neck muscle. Regardless of who, what, or where I find myself in the next year, I want to be mindful of how happiness is threaded throughout my daily life. It will be a nice obstacle to the negativity that can sometimes overwhelm us each day, to try and find the joy hidden beneath the unnecessary daily evils.

I hope everyone else is setting attainable and positive goals for the coming year as well! I hope to travel abroad once more- hopefully teaching English somewhere (more on that later) – and travel within America to Nashville, Charlotte, and Washington D.C. on another cross country road trip, complete with camping and debauchery laden stories. But most of all I want to continue to grow into the badass bitch that I finally know I am meant to be. Cheers to everyone starting off the New Year right for you!