400th Post: A New Start

I can't believe this is my 400th post! After three and a half years of blogging, I can say that this experience has been life-changing—seriously. I look at life differently. I take more pictures of my life. I look at myself differently and can better see where I've been, where I am, and where I want to go. Blogging in many ways is a way of self-accountability for me. Yes, I love having readers and receiving comments, but really I blog for myself. I started blogging the summer between my high school graduation and my first semester of college—how amazing it is that I have a consistent and (relatively) thorough record of these important years! Because of blogging I feel that I have a more secure sense of who I am. For my 400th post, I want to introduce my word for 2010.

Last year my word was light, a word about which I was really excited at first. However, throughout the year I found myself thinking more about 2008's word, become, a word that I think will affect my entire life. So in thinking about what I wanted to do this year, I wanted to find a word that means more to me than last year's did, means just as much to me as become does.

And I came up with nothing. Until I talked to my mom.

The other day I was talking on the phone with my mom—my beautiful, incredible, loving, insightful mother—about something that was weighing heavily on my mind. I didn't know what to do, and I felt somewhat lost. My mom gave me several words of useful advice, but the most poignant and meaningful thing she said to me was this: "Charlotte, make your own happiness." That stopped me in my tracks, stopped my thoughts, my tears, my words.

While not a single word, this phrase, make your own happiness, affected me strongly upon hearing it initially, and it's been in my mind ever since. This is what 2010 will be about: making my own happiness.

2010 will be a big year for me: I'm graduating college and will enter the "real world," a world ripe with more uncertainty than what I've experienced. I don't know what else will happen this year—I'm always amazed at how so many things happen that I don't expect—but regardless, I will make my own happiness.