26! Today I'm celebrating an unremarkable birthday to close out a highly remarkable year. I had so many plans, goals and dreams for 25...and watched them all change, crumble or become irrelevant as I changed careers, ended relationships, and completely re-evaluated my priorities. For 26, I'm not setting deadlines or worrying about the future or benchmarking myself against some invisible, self-established timeline.
Instead, I'm going to embrace the fact that I'm a twenty-something Millennial, and live it up accordingly. After I quit my public accounting job, I joked about how I left behind busy season and started enjoying "Lizzie Season." After a year of bizarre personal growth, I'm excited to enjoy a Lizzie year. 26 is going to be a good one...I can just feel it.
In the year of 26, I am going to:
-wear lipstick as often as I feel like it and smile enormously with or without it on.
-go to the gym as much as I can, but stop hating myself on the days when I just plain can't.
-happy hour spontaneously and laugh with my friends without worrying about how loud we're being.
-grow yellow flowers, and if I kill them, buy and grow more.
-travel with open eyes and comfortable, pretty shoes and my camera always at hand and people with me who enhance the experience.
-tear up at wedding ceremonies...and tear it up at wedding receptions.
-send cards and thank-you notes and texts and Snapchats and emails to everyone I love to tell them that I love them.
-devour books and write volumes and see movies and watch tv and visit museums and see plays and experience music and study art and seek beauty everywhere.
-enjoy all the pretty, funny, delightful things that make me happy, no matter how big or how small.
-embrace my hyperbolic, superlative excitement about life in general and stop giving a damn if that's to everyone's liking or not.
So there you have it. Frivolity, happiness, little things...all of which I am determined will add up to a great year. With that, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEEEE...I'm off to pretend to work and really just spend the day celebrating :)