A 2023 Goal
In December of 2022, I was on winter break, I had just flown back to Jersey after spending the past months in my first semester as a college student, at the University of San Diego. My mom’s side of the family was having a family reunion at a hotel on the bay side coast of Florida. I had elected to ride down the East Coast with my mom, dad, sister, cousin, and three dogs in our RV as opposed to paying for a flight. If you have a couple drivers, you can make it from Jersey to Florida in one shot. My mom and dad switched out driving, and we drove through the night. (They asked me if I wanted to drive, but I refuse to even drive my dad’s truck, let alone an RV). Anyway, it was maybe 2 AM and I was sitting in the front seat, staring at the expanse of road before me, maybe Virginian, maybe Georgian, who knows, who cares. It was New Year’s eve, and I began to think about the year ahead of me.
I hadn’t really thought about a new years resolution or anything of the sort up until that point. I had decided I wanted to stop eating meat in 2023 and hadn’t been for about a month before this point. I decided to give up fast fashion almost completely. I wanted to buy mostly secondhand, and not shop for new clothes that weren’t sustainable and ethically sourced. Just doing more for the environment was a major goal for the new year. I thought more about the year ahead of me and what real goals I wanted to make apart from the ones just mentioned, goals that were broader and were doing something as opposed to giving up something.
My main goal for 2023 was to document my life better. That goal consisted of a few things. For one, I’ve been creating a video of my life by recording one second of every day and imputing them into an app that stores them. I’ve been doing this every single day since New Year’s 2020. I’m on year four of one-second-a-day and give myself a decent amount of credit for sticking with it for so long. So, I wanted to continue with that. Another aspect was pictures. If you know me off-screen, you know that I am normally the friend taking pictures. Of everything. Like all the time. I pay Apple monthly for extra storage if that tells you anything. I love taking pictures, and I love having them, but sometimes it gets a little excessive. You know when you have like a hundred pictures of the same thing, and never really delete the outtakes? Or take a screenshot of something momentarily useful but keep it for years? I decided I would continue to be my picture-taking self, but I would take pictures of meaning. Pictures worth space on my phone, and pictures that I will want to look back at. Basically just being more intentional with my camera roll, and deleting things that have no worth. So that was another way to document my life better.
Lastly came the idea for a blog. I played around with the idea for a while. I wanted a space to talk about my own life experiences, recount busy times, write about vacations or lovely days, anything of the sort: my life. I also wanted to be able to talk about ideas- about things I have passion for or am trying to learn more about. Things that weren’t experiences, just topics- things like feminism, productivity, mental health, or even just whatever is on my brain at any point. I thought maybe a vlog, but that has a physical aspect that was slightly unappealing to me. I didn’t want to have to make sure my makeup and hair were done before I offered thoughts, and have to essentially write a script and perform it on film, then edit it. Written posts on a blog give me an opportunity to work out my thoughts in words and edit them as I write. And all of a sudden it made so much sense to me. And I was deadset on the idea.
That being said, I had no clue how to make a blog. I didn’t even read blogs. But I knew it was something I wanted to do, so I decided to start doing it. And surprise surprise, it was really fucking hard. I spent a lot of time researching, a lot of time reading words I had to look up the definitions of, and a lot of time realizing I am far from a computer science person. Anyway, I finally started making real progress in mid-February. After countless hours of research, website-building, brainstorming, crying, writing, and a lot of other stuff, here she is. And I’m pretty damn proud of myself for creating what I did. I hope that this blog will be a place for whatever I want it to be. And that it will evolve with time as I do.
Honestly, the idea of literally anyone reading all of this is actually terrifying. Putting something creative out in the world always will be, I think. The people who know I’ve been making this know that I was building “a blog I don’t want anyone to read”. And as true as that is, I’m also really excited to be doing something that I am passionate about. And the blog is for me more than anyone else. It’s something I’ve created myself, for myself. So welcome to MYRIAD : )