I am sure that it comes as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that 2022 was a hard year. Honestly, 2020 changed so much for all of us that I don’t know if we’ll ever truly recover from the events of that year. 2020 saw me losing my job and my maternal grandfather–my Nana ji–within a 24 hour period. I didn’t fully understand my emotions about losing my Nana ji until my birthday in 2021 that I spent in Venice, Italy. For many reasons that trip opened me up and began to heal my old wounds. In the words of Taylor Swift herself, “Time, mystical time / Cuttin’ me open, then healin’ me fine” became my anthem.
2022 was hard for me because I had lost track of who I was. Like I said above, I saw glimpses of my true self finally emerging during pivotal moments in 2021, and in 2022 I had to fight for who I was. The inner fight of who I was in the past, who I was currently, and who I wanted to be in the future was hard to manage. I wish I could say that I’d fallen to peer pressure or parental pressure in regards to my actions, but truthfully, I was the only one to blame for the state of my life. Yes, there were a lot of aspects of my life that were out of my control. Yes, there were events that happened that changed my life.
But the majority of my fear and anxiety came from me. They came from the pressure I put on myself to look a certain way and do things a certain way. I put so much pressure on myself to achieve certain milestones in my life at certain ages. I had to go to grad school by the age of 25 and have a steady job and a career by 30. By my 30s I needed to find a place I wanted to put down roots. If I chose, I needed to be in a relationship by my early 30s.
2022 taught me that none of the above truly mattered. 2022 taught me that it was possible for me to live my life to the fullest without meeting all of these arbitrary benchmarks. 2022 brought me back to my power. 2022 allowed me the time to see that I had held myself back, but it didn’t need to be the end. Even though I wasn’t in grad school and didn’t have a fulfilling career, I was still a capable person. I was still worthy of fighting for. I was still worthy of trying for.
As you can see from the archives, I had a single post on this blog in 2022: A New Direction. It ended up not really going anywhere on this blog, but it did change a lot for me personally. By this time I had decided to finally make the move to WordPress–I already had a self hosted site–and really take this blog in a new direction. Even though I am still struggling to find my posting schedule, I am allowing myself the grace to try and fail and try again and again and again.
I know that this post is probably not the most coherent content I’ve shared and it might seem very random. I am sure that it is a little bit more personal than expected, but I hope that this explains a little bit about where I was mentally in 2022 and why this blog didn’t go anywhere. I am beyond excited for what’s to come in 2023 and I hope you stick around.
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