Prescript: I wrote this on January 26th and forgot to actually post it. So, here it is, completely as I wrote it many months ago:

As per usual, I am almost a month behind on my writing. Thanks to the kindness of some friends, I was lucky enough to start my year with another big ticket item on my list: indoor skydiving.

Considering I already went actually skydiving last summer as the first item I crossed off my list, indoor skydiving felt a little anticlimactic. I had a great time, though, and would love to one day be able to freestyle fly the way the instructors did. Each turn was only 60 seconds long, and our flying was controlled the whole time by an instructor. I would love to be able to move about in the air like on my own, but moves like that require a lot more training than I had received. Someday, though, once I’ve finished the other items on my list, I may revisit that goal.  I got to do this on January 1st, so I started 1/1 off with something I had never done before.

This year has contained a lot of firsts for me already. My girlfriend and I made our relationship official at the start of the year. This is my first official romantic relationship, and so far the experience has come with many firsts for both of us. I also bought my first car this year; as things with my family have gotten even more complicated, my grandparents decided they wanted to revoke the car they had gifted me. I needed a new vehicle quickly, and got very lucky with a used Jeep Patriot that will hopefully be more suited for my needs than the Nissan Altima I had been driving. This brought about even more firsts- the first time I got my car detailed, the first time I had a car towed, the first time I had to work with the DMV aside from when I got my drivers license, and more. I also purchased my own car insurance and health insurance, and am specially budgeting for the first time in a long while. 

The first month of the year is almost over, and I am so excited to see what other firsts I experience. In all honesty, though, I am also very afraid. This year I will graduate from culinary school and have to start repaying my loans. I will be moving in with my girlfriend, and taking the next step in my career. I don’t know if I’m ready for all of it. I’m so afraid of something going wrong and skewing my plans. I know there are no guarantees in life, but I feel as though the proverbial rug has been swept out from under me too many times in the past few years. Waiting around hoping everything works out is not my strongsuit. But still, we press on. I feel confident that everything must settle down eventually.