Hello 2024
I am sitting on my couch. Clicking the green diamond inside the white circle app on my computer repeatedly to no avail. It was my haphazard attempt to play Sims, a game I suddenly had a hankering for. The program says my last play was January 8, 2023, that can’t be right, can it? Has the last time I played this escapism game been a year ago? Had I really let an entire year go by. Sims quite frankly had always been my game. Hours lost in my parent’s basement at 13 years old, making decent looking couples eat, sleep, and woohoo. Ogling at the baby cartoon on the screen. Being able to create an entire world and have control gave me a comfort that I otherwise couldn’t afford. Every time I’d start at 11am I’d look up and the room would be dark, it was now the evening, and I had barely eaten. This game had gotten me through so much, but it also represented a time lapse, because real time didn’t exist, Sims time did. Hours went faster in the game so I didn’t notice the rate time was going in my actual life. My Saturday was dedicated to building the life for someone else, someone who in hindsight didn’t wasn’t real. But I was invested, I loved creating and designing, I loved watching my Sims grow, I loved witnessing this virtual evolution. I loved the control. So today, sitting on my laptop, trying to avoid writing, put more time in between me and what I want to say, but I realized that for whatever reason my Sims application isn’t going to open. Instead of creating a life and observing it from a screen, I figured this is probably the universe saying it was time to stop the avoidance, I could make better use of my time by acknowledging how I actually exist.
The first question I asked myself, is if this is really true, and my Sims application just isn’t old and out of date, if it really has been a year since I last played this imaginative game, who am I now in respect to where I was a year ago, when I was playing Sims? What triggered me to want to play this escapism game?
2023 was one of my hardest years to date. Quite frankly 28 was one of my hardest years. I thought I’d start this out by saying that 2023 wasn’t great, but in hindsight that isn’t true, it was actually successful. I obtained my MBA, made it to year 3 in my relationship, restarted my blog, made more money, traveled to another country, I mean it was a year of wins.
It also was one of my most humbling years. It was a year where I felt the lowest about myself. I look at my writing and I wince a little bit, I was fighting to my find my voice and the words often came out in this sopping wet trauma dumping mess. When I look at 2023, I know for a fact that this was my Saturn return, the time in my life where the chickens came home to roost, where it was important for me to look inside and figure out who I am, how I feel about who I was, and what exactly is it that I want in this life.
2023 was a re-defining year for me. It was a year of hard work, mentally, physically, and spiritually. So, when I think of 2024, all I can imagine is reaping the benefits of my effort and determination to do and feel better.
This time a year ago I didn’t know if I wanted to be here anymore. Honestly, I was tired, I didn’t recognize myself, on the outside I was doing everything right, but I couldn’t even enjoy my triumphs cause I didn’t know the person experiencing them.
Today, of course I am the girl younger me would be proud of, but it isn’t because of all of the outside accolades, its because I saved my own life. Over the past year I realized, hard work isn’t just about getting up early, going hard in the gym, working towards that promotion or whatever bullshit some LinkedIn influence wanna be will share on the timeline. Hard work is defined as acknowledging the time, patience, and effort taken into understanding yourself. This past year the real hard work looked like healing me from the inside, deciding how I wanted to show up in this world, while simultaneously having to still operate every single day. See, getting out of bed can be considered hard work for someone who doesn’t feel alive when they’re awake. Hard work is sometimes simply laying the foundation, so that when the real difficult experiences come in, when change finally knocks on your door, you feel a bit more equipped to handle it. Equipped not prepared. Preparation is part of the hard work, being equipped to handle what is next is the result of that.
See, we don’t just study for an exam to ace the test, we study to understand the knowledge on the test to be used to pass the class, we are preparing for the version of ourselves on the other side of that test, that version of us is equipped for a harder test, another class, another year, a graduation, a new job so on and so fourth. I thought last year was my hardest year, and maybe it was because I was in the mode of laying the foundation, to a stronger, healthier version of myself. It’s only been a month or so of 2024, and I honestly feel like all the change I am about to endure….well I wouldn’t have been equipped for it a year ago.
For the longest time I just couldn’t write. I didn’t know what to say, and now that I have waited, I can kind of hear my voice, ever so softly in the background, allowing me to both remember and redefine who I am. When I look back at 2023, I look at it through photos, I took a pretty decent amount for someone who was at the self-proclaimed “end of her rope.” There was a sea of smiling faces, striking cuisines, views from places I stood, I can remember pieces of each memory on my screen staring back at me, at times where I felt so low… but on those days I decided to get up, I decided to live, I decided to experience. I watched over the span of months as I healed myself, I watched myself kick ass at my job, graduate, remind myself how in love I am with my friends, my family, my boyfriend…. And myself.
I kept thinking once I can get better everything will fall into place. And that’s true. But it wasn’t just about getting better to feel better, see at the time that’s what I thought, I just want to feel better, unbeknownst to me I was getting better because the changes that I was seeking within also came with all the external goals and dreams that I was manifesting into fruition too. I had to get better to experience the good change, to experience the bad change, that was inevitable in my next chapter.
In this new year I was preparing to start writing again, and despite the schedule I had outlined, something told me to just sit back and relax, don’t force the need to write. The scenarios and the prologue will reveal itself, in time. I figured if I were to start this piece on Jan 1st, I haven’t even experienced enough of this new era to really understand what I am being equipped for.
February just kind of felt like the time. It fit in this stubborn puzzle of setting the tone for the new year and this new era. For a while I couldn’t figure out my purpose in writing. I wanted my voice back. I wanted to share again. It had been so long, but I struggled so much with being able to be vulnerable in that way. I didn’t want the bad experiences in my life to be my reason to write. I didn’t want to have nothing of substance to say at all because everything was so cookie cutter. I longed for the simplicity and perfection of the young ladies who seemed to have it all figured out and have everything fall into place, naturally. I felt this silent allegiance with the women who stood out because their darkness intertwined with their light. I realized I am both. There were multiple sides to me. I had chosen a path that makes me the most relatable because I identify as someone who has experienced a lot in this short 29 years of life, things that have made me wise, compelling, and authentic. And though I wish it was all good experiences, or sometimes I long for it to be perfect and pure, I believe pain is necessary, in fact I appreciate it a bit, and I know it’s inevitable in my story. I hope it allows others to see a bit of themselves in me, and pushes me to see myself in others – which has created a defining purpose in any and everything I do.
In this new year I have already experienced new opportunity, loss, faith, and fear. In fact, unlike any video game or escapism tool I would like to use, I haven’t had much control in what has been thrown at me, but I have been growing the tools to be equipped enough to handle it.
I have asked God to allow me to trust him and myself and he gave me the most complex scenarios to do just that. So if you are wondering what this new year or new era will bring you, think of it this way, this is the year where your hard work pays off. Where your strength is shown. I don’t really think things make a good year or a bad year. I truly believe time is how you define it. This year may be where you reap the benefits of last year’s struggle. Or you reap the benefits of last year’s rest, or you reap the benefits of acknowledging last year’s celebration or you reap the benefits of last year’s reset. It is the year you step forward and unbeknownst to you, begin present preparation again so you are more equipped than before of whatever comes next. I believe you are more capable than you realize, this universe is going to give you what you can handle, and the moment that you think you may break, just remember the work you put in last year, the you from last year prepared to be ready for what’s coming next from the extremely blessed and beautiful, the horrendously difficult, and all the sweet subtle moments in between.
