We checked out late from our fairytale New Year’s Eve in a room that looked like that one and returned promptly to real life in very frozen Chicago, starting the new year on the highest of all possible notes – brunch from Orange. (If you've never been, stop what you are doing and go. Right now. Order the orange rosemary french toast and a carafe of orange coffee. You're welcome.) We earned it after the amount of Ciroc consumed the night prior, lamenting that it’s just too bad every day can’t be chauffeured by a Bentley, accompanied by 8 course dinners and skyline views.
I’d like to say I accomplished everything on the aforementioned list; that I lost 40 pounds, that I maintained thanking someone every day in my blog, that I figured out how to not procrastinate in my last quarters of grad school, that 2011 was a breeze. It was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. On a New Year's Eve that will honestly probably never be matched for the rest of my life, Val and I swore to a rule of 4. I won’t tell you what those 4 were; they are super secret and only known by us and the Donald himself.
What I will tell you is that I accomplished infinitely more than the wide-eyed girl with the red lipstick could possibly have imagined.
I finished grad school, I acquired a big girl job; I even survived the worst not quite big girl job on record. I ran, I danced, I sipped too much gin. I fell in love with someone who tolerates my fleecy polka dotted pajamas and thinks it’s adorable that when I get really tickled about something, I laugh without my mouth moving. I traveled to both oceans, I figured out being by myself, and, somewhere along the way, I moved on. I realized it’s ok to be homesick, to cry to your mom on the phone, to flee instead of fight every single battle. I realized how thankful I am that Taylor Swift convinced me to keep believing in fairy-tale-breathless-head-over-heels-romance. I also learned how to make a rocking moussaka. (Seriously. My roommates will vouch for its awesomeness).
Maybe I still don’t know what I want to do in ten years. Maybe I don’t know how I’m ever going to manage to save enough money to go to Paris or if I want to get my PhD.
But I do know, after fighting battles and problems and pickpockets and broken hearts, who I am today, what I want for breakfast tomorrow. I know that it’s impossible to show the amount of gratitude I feel for where my path has brought me, but that a thank you note is always the best way to start. I know that anything is easier when you have someone there to hold your hand. I swear that sometimes when I wake up for my 7 AM meeting, while I’m drinking my intentionally tepid coffee and sunlight is spilling into my dining nook office and I can hear the softly muffled snores of my roommates, I know I’m ready to take over the world, one comma, one casserole, one more lap on the treadmill at a time.
I’m starting 2012 with about a million big dreams and wishes, more determined than ever to make the most of the coming year, to make it even more incredible than the last. I’m using every last breath of every day following every single one of those wishes.
My parting thought is a challenge to you:
Think of the 5 things that made you the proudest in your 2011.
Did you save enough for shoes like these Louboutins?
Did you trade chocolate in for salads and see stunning results? Did you cross something huge off of your bucket list? Think about it. And do a little victory dance (Or a big one. I won’t judge, promise!). And let that little victory catapult you into an incredible 2012, full of love, laughs, happiness and successes!
Kisses,
AJS
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