Hello, yes it’s my 13-year-old-self, she’s calling because she wants her Twilight obsession back amongst many other cringy things I thought were just phases and well in my past.
2020 has definitely been one of the most unique years of my life, and I thought for sure this was gonna be my year of international travel and knocking so many things off of my bucket list! However, this year turned out to be just me simply existing and trying to cope with the world around me. I’m not the only one that’s experiencing this, but our ways of coping are all so unique! Many of my friends on Facebook have coped by baking bread, starting businesses, or finally finding the courage to switch career paths, while here I am talking to animals all day and trying to make my fake island cute.
I actually beat myself up for a long time because I felt I didn’t progress enough! I always told myself that if I had all the time in the world I would finally do things that I wanted to do, like make more art, learn new things and finally stick to a workout routine! I didn’t do a single thing that I thought I wanted to do but I found myself actually enjoying myself now more than I ever have before!
At first, I couldn’t believe that me and my friends could stay up every night until 3 in the morning watching Twilight and fighting about which team we were on — and how embarrassing it was that a group of twenty-year-olds were doing this — but we were actually having fun! We laughed so hard that we would cry. I barely left my room because I was playing video games and blaring Sleeping With Sirens and Paramore. These were all things I had convinced myself for a long time that didn’t belong in my adult life.
I am so proud of my friends that decided to take steps to further their professional careers but I am also so proud of myself for finding things I enjoyed again. The moral of this story is that we put too much pressure on ourselves to fit into society standards. We think that we age out of things, or that things should be phases, but what if they’re not? What if they genuinely make us happy?
So whether you’re submitting an application for law school or trying really hard to learn tiktok dances, as long as you’re working hard at something you love then you’re making more than enough progress.