So, it was my birthday on this past Tuesday, and as you can tell from the size of the punchbowl, it was a good night. I am officially 22-years-old, and feel no different from before. I’m still a college student wrestling with the fact that I will be graduating in May, granted I pass all my classes.

Something that I’ve been thinking about is just how fast time can go sometimes. I may be just 22 now, but even now I feel like it was just yesterday when I was only five walking into my first day of kindergarten. How soon will I get married? How soon will I start a family?

Everyone is always concerned with what’s next, that we have forgotten how to live in the present. I’ve talked about how I hate the question, “What are you going to do after college?” The ones that do have a plan for the future are praised as “proactive” and “go-getters” while the ones that are still trying to figure things out are considered “lazy” or “incompetent.” But why are we not allowed to still try and figure things out? We’re all expected to know what we wanted to do years ago. I just wish that there was a pause button for life.

But back to birthdays, it’s starting to get to that point where the “big” birthdays have now passed, and that each birthday hereafter is just another reminder about how short life really is. We couldn’t wait to grow up while we were kids, but now we wish we could turn back the clock. The reality is that we’re all on borrowed time with our own countdown. We just don’t know when our countdowns end.

In no way am I saying that my life has sucked up until this point. My life has been filled with many great things that I am truly thankful for. I have a great relationship with my parents who have given me everything and friends who I would give up my kidneys for. What I am saying is that we aren’t given enough time to be able to appreciate them properly. In fact, society has made it a point to tell us that everything in life is temporary.

But, we shouldn’t let time define our lives. Time is just a social construct. Why do we let a few minutes get in the way of what we really want? We all just want to be happy, but constant deadlines and weekly agendas can sometimes get in the way of that.

Where’s the pause button? Why is taking a mental health day to just relax looked down upon? I guess we can only dream.

I’m graduating college within the next few months. That is absolutely crazy to me. Where has the time gone? It feels like just yesterday where I was moving into my freshmen dorm. I remember my parents and I lugging all of my stuff up three flights of stairs because we wanted to avoid the long lines at the elevators. But now, here I am about to leave college. I’m not going to lie, the thought about graduating college is probably the scariest thing to me. Because now, I have to enter the real world.

I’ve always been one to take on new challenges as they come, but how can I do that when everything in our society is constantly telling us to think about the next thing? My least favorite question to answer is, “What are your plans after college?” The reason I hate that question is because I always feel like a failure whenever I tell them, “I don’t know.” I can only focus on one thing at a time because that’s just how my brain works. Right now, I’m focused on graduating, and that’s even getting harder and harder to focus on.

How did our society become one of constant go, go, go? Why can’t everyone just slow down for a second? I constantly feel like I’m being suffocated by all of my friends who already have their lives figured out or already have post-college job offers. How can I compare to that? Sometimes, I feel like just saying, “Fuck it,” and dropping off the face of the earth because that seems like the only way to escape. But, I can’t do that. I can’t disappoint my parents who gave me everything. I just can’t disappoint anyone.

Thinking about the future sucks. It’s my least favorite thing in the world, because when I look towards the future, I can’t see anything. I don’t know where I fit in, or what my purpose in life is. I know I can’t keep retreating into my bubble for the rest of my life, but how I can even leave the bubble where I don’t even know where to go?

I just want to live for a little bit. I want to see the world even just for a day.

But I can’t do that.

Hello, everyone! You probably got to this site by accident, but that’s okay. A click is a click, right? Anyways, I probably know what you’re thinking, “Great, another girl who thinks she can just start a blog and be successful. I need a nap,” Well, the “I need a nap,” part is a recurring thought of mine everyday, but that’s besides the point.

I guess I’ll start with a little bit about myself first. I grew up in the Bay Area and was raised by my wonderful parents who did everything in their power to make sure I had the best life possible. Growing up, I was a bit of a quiet kid. I kept to myself a lot and only had a few friends who I considered close. This pattern continued throughout high school and college. It’s not that I’m shy, just very introverted. But, even though I’m more of the quiet type, that doesn’t mean I’m not observant. I tend to notice things that most people look over. I’m analytical and probably think too much over the little things. Because of that, that’s how my love of writing began to develop. Anything that came to mind I would jot down and sometimes would flesh out into full-blown personal essays or op-eds.

About two years ago, I was a student contributor for an online publishing platform. At that point, I was very involved in writing and looking for any ideas I could that I could write an article about. I wrote about everything from politics, entertainment, and just general college life. That was a fun time in my life, but sadly I had to give it up because classes were starting to pick up and I had to focus on raising my grades after I had screwed up severely my freshmen year.

But now that I’m about to graduate, I begin to wonder that maybe I should’ve stuck with it. To be quite honest, I’m at a point in my life where I feel like I’m just going through the motions. I wake up, go to class, come home, do homework, eat something, sleep, and then wake up and do it all over again. It’s hard to think about doing anything for myself nowadays and to just live in the moment because everything is all about looking forward to the next thing. “What are your plans after graduation?” “Are you going to move back home, or stay in San Diego?” “What’s for dinner tonight?” Again, “What’s for dinner tonight?” is a daily recurring thought of mine, but no matter.

I guess the point I am trying to make here is that this blog is my way of doing something for myself. Starting a blog has always been something I’ve wanted to do, I have just never pulled the trigger, or taken it seriously. At the start of this year, I made a vision board with all of my goals for 2019, and starting this blog was one of them.

I’m not looking to be the next “big social influencer” or anything like that. Believe me, that’s probably the last thing on my mind right now. What I really want for this blog is for it to be my own little corner of the internet. I would like to compare it to my own little place of solitude, but except my place of solitude is being made public to the whole world on the internet.

I hope to be someone that people can relate to. Frankly, I’m just a normal college student trying to find their place in the world, along with countless other students drowning in homework and exams. But, if I can at least have this little corner of the internet to retreat to every now and then, that’s really all I can really ask for.