2018 was a weird year.
I started it at home, on my couch, with my best friend of more than a decade by my side.
I was cautiously optimistic. I’d just ended a very rough 2017 — during which my parents had announced they were filing for divorce, I’d broken up with my boyfriend of two years and I’d been grappling with anxiety issues.
I figured there was nowhere to go but up. It took a while, but reflecting back on the past year, I think I was right. Things got a little bit worse before they got better, but from my current point of view? Things are A-OK.
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first, shall we?
In 2018, my childhood pet cat Midnight died after 18 years. My parents progressed through their divorce proceedings, which took a huge emotional toll on me and my siblings. I floundered a lot at work during a calendar year that brought huge management changes to my company, which only added to the general stress that comes along with working in the uncertain environment that is journalism in the year 2018.
I also went through one of the most painful breakups of my life. That best friend I kicked off the new year with? We decided to start dating a few weeks into the new year. The relationship ended after a few short months. In retrospect, it was an absolutely terrible horrible no-good idea. I won’t get into the specifics, but I wasted a lot of time, money, energy and emotion on someone who was unwilling or unable to reciprocate. I also lost my best friend in the process.
It took months to get over the breakup. After the immediate aftermath, I stopped dating and brought myself back to the goal I made for myself at the end of 2017: focusing my time and attention on myself.
I’m so glad I did that, because as soon as the pain of the breakup started to ease, everything started to fall into place.
I celebrated my 29th birthday by taking my first solo trip abroad, to Berlin. It was the absolute best trip I’ve ever taken. I also took amazing trips to Houston, Boston and New Orleans in 2018, and also traveled to Milan, Istanbul, Prague and Barcelona.
I enrolled in Spanish classes, and after 10 months, I’ve learned enough of the language that I can (albeit slowly, very slowly) read intermediate-level local stories and hold elementary-level conversations with Spanish speakers.
I became a RYT200-certified yoga teacher! This decision left me feeling so fulfilled, strong, happy and accomplished. More on it later!
I became an ESL teacher for immigrants and refugees here in Chicago, teaching English classes weekly through Heartland Alliance on a volunteer basis.
I was honored as my alma mater’s Young Journalist of the Year at a banquet, where I got to dress up, give a speech, and celebrate at my favorite bar surrounded by my favorite college newspaper colleagues-turned-friends.
I produced a bunch of work for the paper that meant something to me, including a podcast miniseries about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and a written piece about a topic I really love. As a whole, my newsroom also unionized and moved into a new office space.
And, finally, on a more personal level, I started opening back up to the people in my life. After spending most of 2017 and 2018 shutting people out and keeping myself closed off (especially after the aforementioned breakup), I found myself letting my guard down as the year came to a close. I started allowing myself to feel things for people. I gave myself permission to foster connections I would have avoided earlier in the year, and I let myself lean in to relationships that force me to be vulnerable.
So, 2019! What’s ahead?
I plan to keep studying Spanish and improving my conversational skills. I’m going to travel more, and I’m going to do a lot of it alone. I’m going to keep teaching English to immigrants and tutoring public school kids, and I’m going to keep practicing yoga — and hopefully start teaching it! I also want to start blogging more. That’s something I kind of fell away from this year, but I miss using my little platform to share the things I experience with the few who want to read.
And, I’m going to try my hardest to keep opening up to the people in my life, in a genuine way.
So, Happy New Year, guys. Let’s just all keep breathing and take this one day at a time.