Moving forward.

Friday was my nineteenth birthday. It was a weird year — not great, but not bad. Strange is a good word to describe it.

This is what I want to do this coming year:

— I want to be more open to love. I had my first "real" relationship this year. It was a whopping 6 or 7 months, and it was awkward. I constantly felt fat and ugly. Part of it was me, and part of it was him constantly telling me that his mum/friends couldn't stand me/found me immature/knew I was going to hurt him. I finally decided to break it off, but I learned that I need to find someone who is able to give as much as they get. I am very energetic, passionate, and intense. I want to be with someone who is my equal — willing and able to go for a five mile run, and then strip down and hop into the random creek we find along the way without being annoyed by my attention span.

I am very independent. I tend to distance myself from people when they get too close, and I want to let people in. I don't mean this in a strictly romantic sense. I want to make more friends, and if a man comes along, I want to let them get close too. I'm not saying that I want a SO, because for the first time in a long time, I'm okay with being single.

— I want to become more confident in myself, and I want to find and create an environment that allows for me to do that. To me, this involves a few different things;

-I need to be eating healthier and taking better care of my body. I'm a "bad" vegetarian. Sometimes people assume that vegetarianism involves a lot of vegetables. Not always true, and Oreos are vegan. My  body does play a role in my confidence level, and while I want to learn to love myself no matter how my skin looks or what I way, I also need to accept the facts. My family has a history of obesity, diabetes, and heart problems. I don't want to die of something so avoidable. I'm thinking about getting some sort of Zumba certification so that I could teach a few classes while I'm in school.

-I have finally started embracing my true style. In my area, people go to class in dirty pajama pants. I go to class in red lipstick and stilettos. For a while, I tried to cut back on everything, putting away the heels and lipstick. I wasn't happy, and now I'm getting back into it. The pencil skirts, the lipsticks, the perfumes, all of it.

—I want to get my passport.

—I want to travel to another country.

—I want to have an average of $1,000 in my bank account. Money is almost always tight for me, and I want to get a job that pays enough for me to keep a steady balance in my account, so that I'm not dreading car repairs/incidentals.

— I want to really embrace this blog. There are so many people out there with so much knowledge, and I have been doing nothing but take from them for so long. I want to sort of fill up my little spot of internet with my knowledge, and help other people learn from my mistakes.