Do I even need to say it?

I don’t want to make a post about this year but before anything this blog serves as posterity. It’s a constantly evolving letter to my future self so I can remember who I used to be and where I was.

I’m looking at pictures from last new year’s eve and I feel overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by how much I’ve changed and how so much of that change has been internal work I’ve finally had the mental space to do.

I spent a lot of time alone with my thoughts this year. More than I’ve spent since Netflix, smartphones, and all the other technological bits and bobs that make sure that I’m somehow alone I am never unoccupied.

Some things I’ve learned in no particular order: I consider myself an open book but that’s a lie because I just overshare about the things I’m comfortable talking about and push down the other stuff. My parents don’t know really who I am and I don’t know that they ever will and maybe that’s okay. I am not afraid of death, I am afraid of dying alone and forgotten with no one to grieve me. I don’t really know what my gender is. Or what gender is as a concept. I don’t actually want a relationship (and you probably don’t either) unless the person is *amazing.* I just want the affirmation and validation and performance of being in a relationship. Once you realize that can be gained from your relationship with yourself and friendship? It is truly over for these hoes. Hating men isn’t revolutionary. I need to read more theory. I can do hard things and do them successfully. How I spend my weekend nights is not an evaluation of how cool I am as a person.

This year sucked in so many different ways but I want to acknowledge that I was very lucky. I didn’t get sick, no one I loved got sick and I kept my job. I have never been more grateful for where I am and what I have. 2020 was the year I took the GRE, applied and got into my top choice graduate program. It was the year I lost a close friend. It was the first year in ages that I didn’t get my heart broken. It was the year I returned to my birth country for the first time in a decade. There were other funny things that happened this year that are not NSFTB (not safe for the blog) but if you know, you know.

I have really simple and straightforward resolutions for 2021. They are maybe my least ambitious resolutions I’ve ever set but they feel very right to me.

1. 2021 will be the last year I can say that I only speak one language: I’m close to fluency in Spanish and a year of re-learning the complicated grammar, expanding my vocabulary and not getting stage fright every time I have to speak Spanish will get me to being able to say confidently “Si, yo hablo espanol” and mean it. (I’m too lazy to add accents to this but trust that I know where they are).
2. Do my best academically.

And that’s it!

See you next year folks.