This blog is 10 years old.
I started it in my senior year of high school, back when I was still young, confused, and brimming with potential. Torn between pursuing my passion of becoming a writer, or following the traditional path of getting a degree in the medical field.
Well, the degree happened. I never used it, but I did get it.
I wonder what 18 year-old me would have thought if she knew that 28 year-old me would still be writing here, but also working as a full-time writer.
I'm nothing special, though. There are like 50 more of me at my workplace and some of them are unbelievably good at what they do. But I'm okay with it. I'm okay with not being the best.
Yeah. After years of struggling with what I want to be versus what everyone else expected of me. Years of fighting with all my power just to stay afloat and keep my head above water. Years of hopes and fears and disappointments. Years of gathering all my strength to prevent myself from becoming another cog in this magnificent, grinding machine.
I just let it happen. I stopped grasping at straws and let myself be what I was always meant to be; just another person.
It's crazy but it also isn't. To think how the decisions that 18-year-old made are what brought me to this point of my life where I'm so at peace with being mediocre and seeing it as a positive thing.
I stopped trying to stand out when swimming against the current for so long absolutely damaged me. Instead, ways to fit in became everything I hoped and dreamed to find.
It wasn't that hard, either. In fact, it was one of the most liberating things to have ever happened to me, precisely because it happened to me, I had no incentive or hand in doing it.
How funny is it that I'm writing about this without bursting into tears, though? The worst thing I could have imagined happening to me ten years ago is exactly why I'm so at peace today.
Hope that's how I'll be looking at things in 10 years, though.
