Twenty-Something Year Old Journalist

It’s the big birthday post. The article that I can rightfully force down all my friends and innocent strangers’ throats. 

This article (in my mind) is supposed to be some of my most innovative work. I’m going to my family’s home in Palm Desert, California with my friends, alongside copious amounts of marijuana, and a plan to use any resource necessary to write the most groundbreaking article the world has ever seen as the curtain closes on year 22. 

As the final night comes to an end, however, and my initial and never-ending Friday, 5:01 p.m. high is finally wearing off, my day of birth glistens in the sun ahead of me, and I have yet to be able to convey the original messages I had intended on conveying. 

I wanted to write about the beauty of time and the art of aging. How excited I am to be 23 and continue to see what life has for me, what life will throw at me, the people I am meant to meet, the memories that are to be lived through, and the lessons left to learn. 

But what I truly learned this weekend and what the final lesson of year 22 has taught me, is that life is fucking hard. 

It really is! There is so much tangling beneath the surface in each of our individual lives. Intricate roots of familial affairs coil and merge, interpersonal relationships serve as a neverending labyrinth, external obligations twist and pull all while our minds act as the ringmaster to the madness and hysteria of it all. 

So much complicated, unspoken, unacknowledged shit occurs in the company of one’s own mind. It’s already hard enough to keep everything caged up and stuffed far below the surface, so why allow external forces, opinions, or perceptions to contribute to any more of the constant chaos? 

That is the first lesson I am bringing into lap 23. Not my circus, and therefore definitely not my monkeys. 

There are 8,025,000,000 (8.025 billion for my slow learners) people on planet Earth. It is statistically impossible that all 8,025,000,000 people are going to get along with you. And it’s even more statistically impossible that you are going to get along with all 8,025,000,000 people back. 

And that’s not to say any one of those 8,025,000,000 is better than any one of the other 8.025 billion (I’m sure you get it by now) others. 

Everyone, everyone, is living their own, unique life and everyone, all 8.025 billion of us, are just trying to do and live life as best we can, because as you can recall—life is fucking hard. 

I’m already over a quarter through the average life expectancy for women, I refuse to waste any more of what is truly precious time here on Earth on anything I cannot, will not, and should not control. 

I know the things in life that make me happy—pop music and George Harrison, downward dogging at 6am, watching SNL, solo movie dates, blogging, doing anything while high, dancing carefree around my room, never shutting up about my blog. I know who I am and that who I am is exactly who I should be. 

I cannot and will not compromise my own happiness, peace, or sense of self for the sake of anyone or anything else. Life is fucking hard. I refuse to make it any harder for myself. 

I am sure there will be a handful of those 8.025 billion people that won’t view the world or accept who I am as I do, but that’s the beauty of life. As long as we can all recognize that everyone is simply trying their best and trying to find ways to make this rollercoaster of life run a little more smoothly, we all might be able to enjoy these minimal years we get here on Earth. 

I have heard, though, that life does get a little more enjoyable when you grant a birthday girl her wish and show some love to her blog.