Hello, 2020

"Let life be an adventure. Live your life to the fullest, unfettered by fear of the ghosts and goblins of what might occur. Calamity and death happen as well to those who hide from life as to those who squeeze every drop of zest from it." - Jonathan Lockwood Hule

See you later, 2019. You were a great year. For dance competitions to random meetups with friends that always end up in laughter, for pools of tears flowing down my face while I cried over uncontrolled emotions or from an episode of a drama, for out-of-the-blue conversations with myself, and for surprises... I say thank you for a great year.

I'm just sat relishing in my freedom after finishing my last assignment for the semester while I type my thoughts on 2019. Yeah, I know I'm 15 days late for this, but I did this in 2018 and I didn't want to just skip reminiscing a year.

Just like 2018, there were a lot of things I was grateful for in 2019.

I'm grateful for reconnections.

Reconnections come in different forms: family, friendship or love (there's probably more, but this is all I have so far). And a few reconnections happened in my life this year. Some old bridges were repaired, and I was able to spend time with a few old friends again.

There was one thing that was very shocking to me, and that is the topic of second chances. Second chances are a funny concept - if they're even a concept - and this year, I decided it was worth the risk to give one. Because of this, I realised there were so many things I didn't know about myself, and so many things that I still need to work on. But no one's perfect and that's something I need to remind myself once in a while.

And because of second chances, I was able to realise that I'm a human being capable of forgiveness. The past still hurts, of course, and is sometimes brought up, but there's nothing I can do except to let that go and continue to forgive. For my own growth and happiness, I don't want to hold on to anything that has hurt me in the past, and I will always be working on this.

I'm grateful for the challenges.

I worked on myself from 2018 and throughout 2019, and I'm going to continue to do that. To achieve improving my confidence and self esteem, I tried stepping out of my comfort zone by joining the dance society. As well as shows, this also meant participating in dance competitions, and participating in these made me realise that one's own confidence and self esteem can't just appear and stay - you have to continue to work on it.

As much as I would like to say that my shyness is gone, it's not as if that old me has disappeared completely - there are still traces of my old self and although I'm a lot more talkative now, can express myself a lot more and someone can actually hold a conversation with me, I'm still that quiet person people know.

Last year, I really wanted to try out spoken word poetry due to my growing interest in it, but I didn't have the guts to read any of my written pieces out (except for that one time after I hyped myself up and got over the nerves). I thought to myself: this is something I want to work on in the new year. I've always strove to better myself by stepping out of my comfort zone and trying something new, and I won't be stopping that.

Reading out loud was a first for me and it was nerve-wracking, but it felt so good afterwards that it made me want to read again. It felt exhilarating to have everyone hear my voice and express my emotions in just a few lines, which made me realise that spoken word was something I wanted to try and keep doing if I could, or if I'm up for it.

I'm grateful for my family and friends.

I'm never going to stop being grateful for the people who I call my friends and family. Just like what I mentioned in my previous end of the year post, these people have helped me through times of adversity; I know that they'll always support me in whatever I set my mind to do, together with sound advice and guidance. These are the people that listen to my problems with genuine care, and who I hope will still be with me throughout 2020. So, thank you, you cuties. I love you all.

For new friends and relationships, I hope our connection will continue to grow this year.

I'm grateful for continuous inner growth.

Just like my goal in continuing to work on my confidence and self esteem, inner growth is something I also want to keep working on. I guess you could say one's own confidence and self esteem is part of inner growth, but I don't want to limit myself to just developing my own confidence and self esteem - I want my inner growth to include enhancing my skills and evolving them because limiting one's own growth does the opposite. Instead, you'll just never grow at all, whether this is externally or internally. I'm never going to cease being the best I can be, and neither should you.

One of my goals this year is to improve my creative skill, which was why I decided to buy an art tablet due to my obsession with webtoons, as well as trying to write more ideas for my book.

Don't ever give up your dream due to fear of failure. You're going to experience failure at least once in your life; the important thing is you stand up tall and keep going - it doesn't matter how, but only that you take that one step, which will be the first step out of many.

To conclude

Thank you, 2019, for a year of growth and internal discovery. I realised there were many things I still needed to work on, but that's okay because perfection is a far-fetched idea created by an imperfect world. Simply put, no one is perfect.

I'll continue gracing you with the best version of myself, 2020.