Hello hi. As I write this I’m hoping that I stuck to my plans and have posted this on July 27th, my 22nd birthday. I’ve started writing this a whole month in advance to give myself less reason to procrastinate, and to ensure that this reflection is as comprehensive as I can make it.

So, 21. What a year. I feel like this year was definitely the year in which I truly learned how to adult. Not that I really want to ever do that for a full year again. This year, I was hired and fired from my first ever proper job. I found a church. I’ve been broke in ways that I never even realised were possible. I’ve had to be really selective about who and what I see because of it. I’ve made a lot of new associates, some new friends, and I’ve lost a couple of people that were really important to me. Let’s talk about it.

I’m going to skim over the fact that I got fired (and hired, yay!) from my first job. ‘Twas an interesting time and I learned many a thing whilst there for the few months I was. However, none of those are things I wish to detail. Let me just say people are scary. I’ve never had such an epiphany that I was disliked so AFTER the matter, usually I can discern during, but life is for living and it seems as though this was the year of realising things forreal.

After that hire and fire, I became jobless, or as I like to call it, “started freelancing” (that was 63% a joke). I DID actually do some freelancing, in which I had some really cool jobs that were exciting and challenging, but I had MORE joblessness. The lesson learned in these past 7 months is that I am absolutely not in a place to freelance full time right now. I don’t have the connections necessary nor do I have the age (lots of people tell me how young and therefore inexperienced I am blah blah). Who knows, maybe I’ll experience a complete 180 when I do my Jordan year reflections. God can do anything.

Off the back of that lesson, I think the biggest thing I learned this year is that I need to trust myself. A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to this episode of The Diary of a CEO where Steven was interviewing Edward Enninful and it felt like everything Edward said directly combatted most of the overarching doubts I had about my journey in fashion. His journey was anything BUT regular, and the idea that one must follow this same trajectory to make it has never sat well with me. Of course, having mentors that have the experience and the tenacity to tell you when you need to put your head down and NOT do something is important. But I don’t think that every single person needs to pay their dues in the same way in order to make it. Especially when their work is good. Look at Gabriel Moses (who told me he’d take a bullet for me) or Mata Marielle and their journeys.

However, trusting myself doesn’t just mean in regards to work. I also need to trust myself generally in life. If I don’t get good vibes about going to an event, I won’t go. If long-term friendships need to be reevaluated, then reevaluated they will be. Bloody hell, if short-term friendships need to be reevaluated, I’ll do it lol. I don’t get FOMO, I’m pretty confident in my discerning spirit, and love staying in my house, so if anything feels wrong, stay in my house I shall continue to do. Saying no is, and will continue to be, my forte. The biggest enemy of that is overthinking, so a goal is to try and do that less about every single little thing. My best friend said to me this year when I asked him what the worst thing about me was (and I’m copying verbatim here, only corrected grammar a bit):

“You destroy the meaning of a thing simply by thinking it into the ground sometimes. Negative can turn into dust before your brain and to me it’s my answer. Nothing I don’t think in my time of knowing you has wrought more havoc than that. And then simply to not even regard any of the thought with any true attention as if to calculate everything then just to sometimes choose c. It to me atleast shows a vigor for life but in a way that would cause me great headaches and strife; therefore I choose overthinking.”

I’ve thought about it ever since. So I’m trying to work on… not doing that.

Speaking of, this year has been very… interesting concerning my platonic relationships. I’ve made and lost friends this year, one of which was devastating, and there are an abundance of things to learn in the aftermath of a friendship breakup. I’ve only had two other friendship breakups that were important enough to write home about, the first being my high school best friend that ghosted me (pretty abruptly) for no reason, and the second one being a childhood best friend that slowly just fizzled out until we didn’t contact each other anymore. Both of these were different to the one I experienced this year because I played a (very) active role in the end of this one. It was me who did the breaking up. That’s a very different experience to breaking up with a boyfriend (which I have also done lol). In a way, it was a harder decision because we were so close, but, at the end of the day, it was necessary, and the last time I checked they seem to be thriving without me.

If we’re getting relationships out of the way, there was only one boy this whole year that was noteworthy, and like the chemical compound that his initials make, it was a mind-altering couple of months. I’m not going to say much about him because a) he’s probably reading this and b) I ACTUALLY really liked him, but the lessons that he taught me?

1. What I deserve. I was going to put “what I want” but I deserve these things
2. That there are men that actually meet my standards without compromising (the standards aren’t even complex, I just don’t accept the bare minimum)
3. How I act when I have that

I don’t know if I believe in right person, wrong time, but if it was to be with anyone in my life thus far, it would be with him.

Okay, now for a rapid fire of the other lessons I’ve learned so we can all get out of here:

• TfL workers may be good looking but if you died in front of them, they’d laugh. My most recent example of this was a week and a HALF ago when I was trying to get a train home and the driver saw me RUN up the stairs, hold my hand up for him to wait literally twenty seconds for the door to open and close for me, and then he proceeded to drive off and I had to wait half hour for my next train. Just get to your train on time, these workers don’t CARE about you
• Money always comes back, though usually not when you need it to
• Being close to God takes dedication, but the closer you get more you can see the difference when you distance
• Teaching someone how to have personal style is fraudulent behaviour (I’m going to elaborate on this some other time)
• Having a church you’re a regular at is amazing. Helps build routine even in times where there isn’t any
• I’m virtually incapable of building a routine unless I’m busy. Even then, I don’t have routines, I just jam pack my schedule with work and successfully add habits I’m trying to implement between said work
• I love heels. Even though I have nowhere to wear said heels. Even though I am 177cm tall. I LOVE heels and now have many, many pairs
• I love a paper planner. My digital calendar is still my lifeline when it concerns leaving my house (if it’s not pencilled in, I’m not going) but I realised that daily to dos will only get done if put on paper
• I will never understand the Bible. And I don’t like that. I’ve learned to be content with the fact that I don’t need to like it to accept it as fact
• Parental relationships are difficult. The older I grow the more I can have compassion for the fact that they’re doing this for the first time
• To write down my ideas. Even if it’s 3AM and I’m trying to sleep, I will now turn that light back on to write whatever mess down
• I love people best when I can choose when to see them in real life. I don’t know how this will work with marriage, but hopefully I’ll marry someone I don’t see every single day
• Intellectualising why you’re feeling something is not the same as experiencing that emotion. You have to do both
• I’m more sensitive than I allow myself to acknowledge. But only when I actually care about the person in question doing the offence
• Don’t buy things full price unless they’re a staple (like jeans or a tank top). 90% of the items I truly love and are part of my personal style will end up in the sale. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should (obviously, here I mean can buy, but this sentiment applies to many other aspects of life, too)
• Some people are really, terribly, idiotic. I’ve learned that there is such thing as a bad question because sometimes you just need to ask yourself, “Have I read the previous message? And comprehend it? Can I Google this?”
• Hot tea tastes superior to tepid tea
• I now understand the birthday haters. Birthdays can be so disappointing. Expecting good birthday celebrations (where everything goes to plan and people don’t let you down) from people who aren’t my family can be disappointing. Next year I am doing a solo trip for a week and a half

A good 22 will involve lots of travel, lots of work, and lots of intimacy, with God, my friends, and family. I don’t want 22 to be a year of romance for me, I just want to cultivate my relationships with my support system. Honestly, if this year is anything to go by, the trials will be trialling, but we’ll get through them sha. I was listening to the first episode in season three of Closet Confessions, and Candice said that it’s not by force that you must suffer in the name of “purpose”. Because life likes to rush me sometimes, I don’t agree entirely, but if God wants to agree with her I absolutely will NOT complain.

That’s all.