I must have said this in the past, but I truly love the close of something and the beginning of another. Meaning, reflecting on the past year is a necessity for me in order to move on. I need to discuss what worked and what didn’t. This post dear reader is going to be more about what didn’t work out. Not so much as in I tried and failed but more of I didn’t try, so nothing happened.

Towards the end of 2024, I started listening to this influencer I had been following for a while called flex mami’s podcast. She said something that resonated with me. That I need to remember for as long as I live. She said, and I am paraphrasing, that we need to be people of action, knowing things and not acting on them is a waste of time essentially. It’s almost like we like telling ourselves the same stories over and over again because we don’t put in the work to change our circumstances. These words resonated with me because I have been whining and crying about the same things for years. Like, I want to be a writer, but I don’t write enough. As evidenced by this blog. I didn’t even write ten posts in all of 2024. How will I ever improve on my skills as a writer and be that writer I have always wanted to be? I have always said, I want to make an income on social media, but where is the work I am putting in? I say, I want to lose weight, but at any slight opportunity I am eating fast food and choosing sleep and scrolling over working out. 

2024 made me realize that my lack of action is the direct result of how my life is. I spend time thinking about how unfulfilling my life appears and I am realizing that it is truly my fault. There are things that just happen to me, but the bits of my life I control over, I don’t exert that control. 

In 2024, I realized that I never truly decided for myself the career path I wanted to be on. I am still on the journey to figure it out. I do think I have wasted time thinking and mulling over what could have been and all there are so many years I wasted  with inaction. 

I also spent a lot of time feeling like a victim. There are things that happen to me that I have no control over, but I am finally coming to terms with how dangerous making myself a victim truly is. I say dangerous because as a victim, there is a waiting around for someone to validate your victimhood and eventually make it all better for you. And when that person doesn’t come, you spend a lot of time waiting. Sulking in your victimhood, wondering why no one is coming to save you, don’t they see how much you hurt? Don’t they see the wrong that has been done to you? I decided that I need not make myself a victim. I don’t need to attach any identity to myself, I just need to keep moving. 

There are so many lessons from 2024, but overall, I learned that I truly need to be myself. I need to figure out who I am, although ever changing, I need to be my core being. People have told me who I am for so long, maybe not in words, but in their expectations of me, and I have decided that enough is enough. I am discovering what I like to wear, the weight I feel comfortable being, the hairstyles I like on me, the things I want to do, and who I want to be around. To be in my thirties and still not fully know myself somewhat feels like I have disappointed myself. But I think better late than ever. Now that I know, it is time to put in the work. I feel ready. 

So, thank you 2024, for the lessons, the tears, and a reminder that this year can be better.