This year has been marked by so many challenges. So much growth and so much discovery.
I feel that I’ve become so much more myself and so much more who I’ve always wanted to be, but with so far to go. I've come to understand that I need to realize that progress is not linear and the things that I want to keep working on will be the things I keep working on within myself all my life—mostly, trying to live a life that is not rooted in fear. Not making decisions based on fear, not behaving out of fear, not being afraid to be myself and to take on scary things and things that seem silly, learning when to trust myself and when to tell my inner voices to f*** off. I don’t have a concrete list of things that happened that defined me this past year because I think that every single moment defined me—every moment when things felt too hard, or when my mind felt expanded in class, when I felt like the world was completely hopeless and lost, when I was panicking, when I was totally overcome with joy, when I was simply content, existing with my fellow beings—every single second of the past year built me into this new version of myself that I am here, on the last day of 2017, on the edge of the new year. Like a mussel shell. Or a tree's rings. The people that I met and what we gave to each other defined me, certainly—personally, professionally, and academically, I am so much more than I was before I met them, so much richer and fuller. I became closer to the people I already had in my life, trying always to make my relationships more open, more honest, more giving, more true. To never hide what I’m truly feeling and thinking (when I know what that is), to give love willingly and trustingly in the knowledge that the universe will give it back. To fight like hell for your own sanity, to know your place in the world and that you deserve to take up space and make noise, to fight for those you love and for what you believe in, to always keep hoping.
Lately I have felt paralyzed and helpless, in my work and in the world, feeling like nothing will ever be good enough. Nothing I make will ever reach the standards I have set for myself, nothing will ever end up how I imagined it, nothing I could do personally would right the wrongs that have been put upon the world. But in 2018, I am declaring a year of doing. Of putting it out there whether you think it’s perfect or not, of doing what you can because you CAN, of never giving up the hope that what you do can make a difference, even if it’s just to one SINGLE person—because that will have been worth it. I’m putting this video out there in the spirit of that. In the spirit of creating more and doing more and being more. I’m proud of it, not because it’s beautiful or perfect or well shot, because it is none of those things, but because I finished it, and it is uniquely mine. Watch this space in 2018, because there is more to come. I am so thankful for all the people in my life who help me feel this way even when I don’t want to, and I am wishing you all fierceness and hope and resilience and great, soul-filling joy in the year to come. I love you <3