The Birthday Post

October 25. My birthday.

I'm 24 years old today.

I rather like that. I find 24 to be a fetching number.

I think I've now successfully crossed over from "Early 20s" to "Mid-20s". Crazy. If I weren't so young, I'd feel so old.


Twenty-three (which rolls off my tongue now the way that "Cherry Coke" does) was a good year. Perhaps a great one. I'm in grad school. I got my heart-broken (which I've decided was a good thing to experience). I'm practically an adult. And in general, I'm content.

I'm constantly learning, growing, and changing. I'm a different person now than I was a year ago, although I think I am very much still me.


What 23 taught me:

- Long-distance relationships aren't going to work out, no matter how great I think the guy is.

- My dreams are worth fighting for.

- If I feel like I'm in a rut, then I probably am, and I need to do everything in my power to get out of it.

- I can accomplish great things if I'm determined enough.

- Sometimes I don't need to apologize.

- I'm alright living on my own.

- I don't have to be an adult 100% of the time. Not even 50%, really.

- I'm young, and it's okay to be impulsive.

- Mistakes can be great things. Sometimes they lead you down better paths. And if nothing else, you learn a lot more from mistakes than you learn by doing things right the first time.

- I really, really, really love theatre. And I really am meant to be an actor.

- I'm good at acting. Very good.

- If I were to be anything other than an actor, I would be a writer. (I guess at this point in my life I'm sort of both.)

- I have a fear of doing things incorrectly, and I need to get over it. As soon as possible.

- It's impossible to be friends with everyone.

- Traffic doesn't always stop for me just because I'm cute. (See Autobiographical Autopsy)

- It is POSSIBLE for me to be a vegetarian.

- I don't much like being a vegetarian. Except for the sense of elitism that it occasionally provides; that I like.

- I am not fat.

- I have the potential to be sexy. I just don't know how to tap into it yet.

- People enter and exit my life at exactly the times that they have to. I shouldn't question it or force it. And I definitely shouldn't lament it.

- I am vulnerable, I am sensitive, and I am emotional. And that's not a bad way to be.


So here's to 24!



May you bloom and grow, bloom and grow forever.

~A~



P.S. It's really interesting to me how much my blogging style has changed in the last year. Just as long-winded, but it's different. Check out my birthday post from a year ago, Fateful Birthdays. It's also funny that I thought 23 wouldn't be very exciting. It clearly was.

P.P.S. Yes, my blessing for you today was a lyric from the song "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music.