one year plus 2 days older

I've been slaving away today on my research proposal and I just finished my draft- 26 pages. I'm not editing it tonight. I should start studying for the first final of the week on Monday, but I'm not studying tonight. It's time to take a break.

It's a wonderful and yet difficult time of the year. Without my permission to be nostalgic, my mind and body are remembering what this weekend last year was like. I was trying to extend my birthday celebration that never really happened by having a Kentucky Derby party. It was truly hitting me that at the end of the next week I was leaving my first professional job, one that I loved and had grown to be quite attached to. I was going through the emotions of my first real relationship ending and the unknown that was associated with it. I was already beginning to mourn the loss of the first city I have ever truly fallen in love with. If you were to ask my close friends how I was doing this time last year, they probably would have told you I wasn't myself. That I was a wreck.

A year later it's really amazing to remember all that this journey has meant to me. I have to push through finals this week, but next week I don't have school and I don't have work. It will be the only full week of the summer like that. I intend to take some much needed time to reflect on who I'm becoming through all of this. There's a part of me that so desperately wants to jump on a plane and get back to the city that holds all these memories. But I need to wait until June to visit.

So here's to my quarter life crisis- I'd say that I hope for a better year than last, but then I'd not be recognizing the growth that this past year has meant in my life. Bring it on, 25, whatever you hold!