Adolescent Dreams

My 2023 word of the year that I chose was Ease. Hilariously I got hit with such intense burnout that I was basically forced to take two months off this summer. Forced ease is still ease I guess. But one of the unexpected things that has come up in the past year is that I’ve allowed myself to like the things I liked as a kid and teen. I don’t think I ever thought those things were bad or dumb, but you know… you move on, you get different interests, find new friends and new communities, and along with that there’s a sort of falling away of the things that felt cool or magical as an adolescent.

One of my huge pleasures this year has been realizing that I can be a person that young me would’ve thought is SO cool. I can be the person I would’ve looked up to or idolized. I spent a lot of years in religion trying to be a certain type of person (righteous, pure, disciplined, worthy, etc). But now I can be who and whatever I want to be, and little whispers from smol Liz have been trickling in from the 90’s/00’s and it’s felt so wonderful to listen to them and run with it.

When I was in second grade a girl in my school published a book and I wanted to do that. It burned inside me. But I think I thought it was too lofty a goal or something and it got buried. I’ve been in contact with a publisher since about 2015 about publishing a book but it’s never happened. And the reason is that I don’t want to publish the book they seem to want from me. Something self-help-y or to do with my platform niche. I keep self sabotaging because deep down I don’t want to write that.

So here I am, 30 years later picking up a goal I set down. Writing. Publishing. And this time I’m bigger and I know what I’m capable of.