Narrative

Truth - Each day we write our life stories. I want my story to always be one of those truly breathtaking epics of old. I want to live a life of navigation, adventure, and exploration always. I want to be challenged, pushed, and moved out of my comfort zone constantly. I want life to be exhilarating, terrifying, and shocking. I want amusement, gut-busting laughter, and surprise. I want randomness, inquiry, and mystery. I want passion, fervor, and zeal. I want it all. I want to be fulfilled and to know that I lived my life to the best of my ability. I wan to be pleased with who I am, what I did, and what I did for others. I want to be a whole person who embraces the plot twists of life. This is my story. This is my truth. This is my narrative.

"Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder." Paul Ricoeur
Words cannot describe how amazed I am that this blog, this written representation of who I am as a person in my entirety, and this documentation of my thoughts, feelings, hopes, desires, fears, and pain is still going. It's been six years, 766 posts, 380K pageviews, and hundreds of thousands words and somehow I am still going. I started this blog giving advice to other teenagers, as if I had any authority or experience to be able to do so, recounted my college story, and now have been sharing my transition to adulthood and reflections on the ways that I experience the world. I began by writing for others but soon realized that I had always all along been writing for myself. This is my journal. This is my mirror. This is my gauge. I get to know where I am and how I am doing by looking back, reading through my own words, and keeping track of it all. I still am astonished by how much my writings resonate with people, what my words mean to them, and how much they take from it. I think it speaks to the shared commonality we all as people have. My story albeit unique and totally my own, has captured a wide variety of experiences for all to learn from. I am grateful to all who take the time to read me. Thank you for your readership, your companionship, and your truth. Your story, much like my own, is worthwhile and deserves to be shared. Don't believe anything otherwise.

Favorites Posts of 2016
December: Homefront
January: Resilience  February: Snapshot
March: Black Girl Magic  April: Youth
June: Impulse July: Opportunity
August: Unrestricted  + Imperfect September: Smart + Policing
October: Choice November: Home
 
 
There are always some posts that do not make the cut but I like to highlight them here. This year I found myself tackling some new topics unlike any others I had ever written about before. As I came in to my own with dating/relationships I wrote about my musings with all of it. Need advice or are disillusioned with millennial dating check out the following:  Love Love, Commitment Issues, Unavailable, League, Sabotage, and Single. Being an election year I also dove deep into the world of politics so here they are: Politics, Dys(U)topia, Divided. Now more than ever I see how I am changing, growing, and growing up. I am figuring it out as a I go and what I realize is that everyone, young, and old is doing the same thing. We are just trying to make our way. We're drafting our narratives each and every day - we may never know what's coming next and that's okay.
 
This year saw me going better in some ways and smaller in others. This year I wrote some lofty and larger conceptualization posts about society and the world we live in. Those were also balanced by the quieter posts where I really focused on a specific topic and teased it all the way out. I find my posts being more relationship and emotion driven than ever before. I find myself rereading posts and being truly proud of my work and the kind of person I'm becoming. I like my story, I love myself, and appreciate where I'm going. My narrative is just my own. I take that to heart, and hope you continue reading along with me. X

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