Almost Midnight Musings

I will be another year older in 45 minutes. So before that, I want to briefly record what I've accomplished and some thoughts on the coming year. (Sometimes on New Years, I make a list of everything good I did that year, turn it into a resolution and backdate it to make myself feel good. Same idea here.)

I'm sitting in my parents' basement. I moved yesterday, and I haven't unpacked yet. Everything I own (besides my car) is sitting next to me on the floor. Probably half of it is clothes. Ridiculous. And all I wanted for my birthday was clothes. I'm such a girl. But Sebastian is here and all of my books too. Everything of mine fits in 8 medium cardboard boxes and 3 laundry baskets. If I was measuring my success by possessions, I'd be really sad right now. But I don't. So I'm not. Or I could choose to measure my success by possessions and be very successful because I have so many things. It's all relative.

Even though I'm relatively unsuccessful stuff-wise, I do feel successful. I have accomplished a lot in the past 12 months of living. I've learned a lot of things about life and love and the world and people and me and family and food and sleep and sanity and happiness and God and grammar. College has been the focus of my life for the past year, but academics has only been a small part of it. The purpose of school is to learn. But it's not all about facts and numbers and grades. It's about learning how to do things. It's about striving. Striving for answers, striving for knowledge, striving to do better, striving to be better. I like the word striving because it implies work. And it takes work to learn. It's not easy. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it's humbling. In fact, I'd argue that it's usually humbling. But it's also beautiful and joyful and empowering. I think that more than anything else in the past year, learning about learning has made it successful. Learning to learn from things puts a different light on life. In the past year, I've learned to just take stuff, good or bad, and learn. And that is why I smile so much. (And because, honestly, what's the alternative? I can be happy- or not.)

Ooo! It's midnight now! Happy birthday to me!

A post about what I want to do in the next year is coming up later. Right now I'm going to sleep.