Tis’ the time of year again, to reflect on moments past and a year, a big ol’ year full of memories, learnings and adventures. This year, feels like a blur of my last semester of university, a summer exploring and the start of a new stage of life as a full time adult and the many many learnings and challenges that came with that.
2017 and 2018 were big years for me. They involved me spending more time hugging trees than not and space, so much space for exploration, in who I was and what I wanted out of a future career and my life. I graduated this May feeling grounded and ready, like I had a direction and a goal or at least an idea and a feeling of what I wanted from my future. But let me tell you adulthood just blows all your ideas and thoughts out of the water. Life no longer being structured into increments of 4 months, allowed more time for me to feel settled (what a weird feeling), which scared the living day lights out me. I didn’t feel the same amount of pressure to make the most of every second. I took how I felt and what my body and mind needed more into account. Which, now that I am thinking about it, is a good thing. I gave myself space to adjust and breathe and try to make sense of what I was doing. But all that space left me a bit stressed. Stressed that I was not doing enough, that I was not pushing myself or exploring enough. That I was settling into an area, a job and a life. I found that friendship in adulthood and connections are challenging and require so much vulnerability and effort. But I also learnt so much about myself, my capability for creativity and care, my inability to stay still, my spirituality, my deep connectedness to trees, my wants and needs.
I have learned that what I crave most out of life is feeling. Or really a series of feelings. Feelings of warmth and kindness from places and people, of excitement, of breathless laughter, of heart stopping, breathtaking, chills all over your whole body experiences. I have always thought of my life as a series of chasing adventures, but really what I am chasing is the extreme emotions of joy and exhaustion and excitement that come from those adventures. And perhaps that is why I feel unsettled with being settled because the day-to-day can take away those big feelings. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still attainable.
So let’s get in to the biggest lessons from 2019. I learned that community and friendships are the greatest gift in the world and building new connections requires a great amount of vulnerability. That connecting to trees any and all chances I get centers me and allows me to feel grounded. That telling the people you love how much they mean to you is one of the best gifts in the world. That my life is mine and I should live it how I want to. That being active clears my head and that I need to listen to my body and mind and travel and explore as much as I can, but also that it’s okay to take a day for myself and to feel settled in a space. I also learned a good amount about not just patience and loneliness but also about joy and strength.
Looking forward to 2020, I am looking forward to giving myself space to feel comfortable and settled in this crazy, wild, big thing we like to call adulthood. To being kind to myself and listening to what my mind, body and soul needs. To getting outdoors and exploring new areas and new countries. To moving more; to music, at yoga, on my bike, on the trail, in any way I can. To making meaningful connections and creating a community and space around myself. To reading more, writing more, and telling the people I care about, how much I care about them more. To diving deeper into my bigger energy field and learning more about my spirituality and letting my intuition guide me. To finding ways to fight for the outdoors and combine my passion for creativity with my passion for the earth. To breathing deeper and being more free to what comes my way. To creating daily things that inspire me and working toward a future I could only begin to dream of but also being okay that I have no idea what that future is.
Here are some of my favorite captures from the past year (musings continued after):
1 graduation, at least 20 pints of ice-cream, 5 new jumpsuits, 2 backpacking trips, 10 Murphy’s Happy Hours, 10 karaoke sessions, 6 trimmed logs, 20 lakes, 1 summer camp design, 6 lodges, 5 Tuk-Tuks, 100 photos of foggy mountains, 1 new job, 50 starry nights, 1 scooter accident, 4 new piercings, 1 peddle wagon, 60 ladders, 5 concerts, 1 trip to Thailand, 200 buoys, 1 cross country road-trip, 1000 wasps, 1 design conference, 4 nights of camping on the beach, 2 new apartments, 10 picnics, 2 tattoos, 10 bags of dehydrated food, 7 new house plants, 2 climate marches, 1 beach pie, 50 rolls of bamboo toilet paper, 1 Colonel Sanders, 73 episode of GOT, 1 pottery class, 1 night of Harry Potter drag, 200 rides on BART and oh my golly so many other moments later, here we are, the end of 2019. Thank you 2019 for giving me more adventures and challenges than I expected. Cheers to a new decade, may it give me many more sappy posts, adventures and beautiful places and people to photograph. Hoorah!
Cheers - keleniak
#heckya