new beginnings

So, let's try this blogging thing. Again.

I'm a writer by nature, by trade, by profession. I write for a living, I write to make myself feel better when I'm going through a tough time (those fictional characters, they really get you). From homemade stories in elementary school to documents titled "novel1.doc" on my parents' computer, to 15 page papers (that were supposed to be, uh, 7 pages), I can't remember a time when I wasn't writing.

The point is, I've been writing in some fashion, steadily, for a long time. As I've gotten older, I've found that outlet in many different ways -- short stories gave way to fanfiction, real journals gave way to LiveJournals, which eventually gave way to blogging platforms like Wordpress and Tumblr. I started trying to blog regularly, out in the open (aka, not in a locked LiveJournal entry where it was safe for me to talk about issues with my friends, my life, my relationship) back in 2010/2011, when I was in the middle of trying to find myself for the 100th time and also in the middle of a relationship that turned out to be extremely toxic in an abusive way. I found some of those entries from that period the other day, entries about things I liked, travels I had taken. A lot of it felt familiar, especially when I wrote about experiences or interests (most of which haven't changed at all in the past few years, except they're not as prominent as they once were) but some of it also felt manufactured, as if I was trying to be something that I wasn't.

I was still trying. I was still learning. I'm older, now, and I'm not sure how much more certain of myself I am, but I do know that at least one thing has changed: I know what I want.

2011 was a strange year of thinking I had myself, losing a lot of myself and not being sure who I was. 2012 was about making it better, figuring out what I wanted, what I liked, who I wanted in my life and what I wanted my life to be. 2013 was me finally making the decision to go back to graduate school and pursue the life I wanted for myself (journalism), picking myself up from a city I had made a home in for almost 10 years and living for a year by myself in the middle of Chicago, away from my family and friends. 2014 was returning to my city finding everything and also nothing had changed, spending six months in my dream job and then five months unemployed with the worst depression spiral I've ever experienced, before things finally straightened out.

2015 was about finding my way again, and I'm trying to continue that trend. Because, fuck, I'm older than 30 and I've already made mistakes I regret daily, and I don't want to be that person I'm unhappy with anymore. I'm realizing that part of that will always be around, but I can take steps to put my life back in order in small ways. And a lot of those are becoming clear as I map out what I want to do in the coming next year: read more, write more, have a more regimented schedule, be better with money...the list goes on. I'll write about this kind of stuff more in detail, eventually.

I'm slowly re-making myself (more on that in the next few entries) and this is a part of it.