On Turning Twenty-Four

Last year, writing my post on my twenty-second year* didn’t feel good. I had to be very honest about my feelings and where I was in life. I wasn’t happy. I felt very stuck and I knew I needed to make some big changes. I wanted 2011 to be a year where I stepped out of my comfort zone and made a conscious effort to be happy. I recently read this quote in a book and there is so much truth in it:

We each make our own happiness. If one is not happy, then one is to blame for it and not a circumstance. Happiness is not something that can be put off for a future time or acquired like a new tie. One either is happy or one is not. (Kissing Adrien)

My twenty-third year was a good one. There were rocky moments and peaks and valleys, just as life is. But there were also really good moments of happiness. Of growth. In last year’s post I wrote that I wanted my life to look completely different than it did a year ago. There were specific avenues I wanted change to happen in.

• My health and weight
• My job
• Being more social
• Being more independent
• Writing more

I can’t say I achieved all the goals I set for myself but I can firmly say my life has taken a 360 spin from last year and I finally feel like I’m on the right path. I found areas of my life I didn’t like and I changed it. I may have not been completely successful in everything, but I finally took action. I began to choose happiness.

Over the course of this month, I’ve been a little disappointed in myself because 2011 is not the year I finally gained control of my overeating tendencies and the year I finally got to my goal weight. It’s not the year where I found love or developed a close-knit group of girlfriends or became more involved in my church. It’s not the year where I became a freelance writer or even got a head start on that novel I want to write.

But it was a year where I graduated from college, went on a fabulous cruise, grew even closer to my mother, my brother, and fabulous Internet friends, and started my career. A year when I began to make scary changes to my life, but didn’t reach out for opportunities as much as I would have liked. I watched my nephew became a little person who I can have conversations and giggles with. I’ve been able to realize that my happiness is of the utmost importance. And that perhaps what is “expected” of me is something I’m interested in doing. I began to see things in my life that were causing me negativity and make the necessary changes to remove those forces from my life.

My life is a whole lot different now than it was last year. I have a college degree, a great job, and more independence. I am happy with the way this past year unfolded. I can’t say that about a lot of my life, but I’m in a really good place right now. I hope it remains so, but even if it doesn’t, I hope I find ways to choose happiness even when my world is crumbling around me.

But I also want my life next year to look a whole lot different than it does right now. I read in a book (same book as quoted above) of a woman thinking of living the next five years of her life without any changes, just the same old, same old. She didn’t want that. I don’t want that. I want to keep growing, keep changing. I never want to be too comfortable with my life. My main focus over the next year is going to be about my health. It’s been something I’ve said I want to figure out in the past, but I’ve reached a turning point, I believe. I want to stop making excuses and letting the comfortable stay in my life.

Change happens when you allow yourself to be uncomfortable.

Age twenty-four? It’s time to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Let’s do this.

*Yeah, yeah. I know it’s technically my twenty-third year, but whatever. That just sounds funny.

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