okay, how did i come off in that last one?
because we can be honest. we can! we should! i’m reading it back to myself now, cringing at the phrasing and laughing a bit at the tone — past me thought she really cooked with that one — but you know what? that’s okay! it’s only in hindsight that everything becomes so much clearer, etc. etc.
let’s just reframe it as, i’m becoming wiser, one terrible thinkpiece at a time.
(and if i really want to spin it, i’d say something along the lines of, ”things have to get bad before they get good”. because how else could i say something is good if i don’t know what bad looks like in the first place?)
december is always steeped in nostalgia for me. it’s a time where things start to slow down; when i start thinking about my newest bullet journal system1 and start wrapping up my current one; when i look at all the photos in my camera roll and try to pick out the 10 that best summarize my year.
this is a herculean task in and of itself — i always end up doing my yearly recap on my finsta instead. i only ever make it to only march at best before i get too exhausted to continue, staring at the screen late at night, my thumbs relieved and also cowed by the 2000 character caption limit.
as a scientist — can i even call myself that when i haven’t truthfully used my degree in years? and yes, it’s years now, plural, humblingly enough — i like to look at situations and behaviors. fact patterns. the idea of “looking back in order to look ahead” has always made sense to me: you look at something, the history leading up to it, and that’s what helps you make educated hypotheses on the direction things are headed.
in practice, it means that i take a moment (or several) where i sit down and go through all these thought exercises like, “what happened this year?” / “how did i feel about it?” / “where could it have gone better?”.
i tend to keep myself busy and my calendar booked, going from one thing to the next. i feel itchy when things get a little too stagnant, when i have too much time on my hands. whether that’s out of habit; or because i moved back home after i graduated college; or, even worse, thanks to some deeper subconscious response waiting for my (currently nonexistent) therapist to do the work of unpacking for/with me.
there’s something calming about combing back through the year, all of the photos that i’ve taken and saved and treasured at one point in time2.
it’s hard work, archiving your life so you have something to look back on when you’re a certain years of distance away from this moment in time, and yet, also wanting to properly enjoy it as it is. it’s rewarding, though, when i’m sitting on the floor of my room and reading a journal entry when i’m supposed to be cleaning. going down that rabbit hole of time. it feels like i’m traveling to meet with an old, familiar friend. what i love most are the little eurekas, small but certain happinesses, the precious memories that i might gloss over when i play the year back on a reel in my mind. that’s the true treasure, i find, the more i do this.
thanks to every bullet journal i’ve kept in my teenage-through-college-now-young-adult-in-my-midtwenties years, i have an archive of the girl i’ve been these past 7 years. she has a physical corporeal form, in between the pages of all these journals. she keeps me company.
a list of things i have wanted to be over the years:
an artist, “because pictures make people feel better if they are sick.” (2006)
a veterinarian (2008)
an author (at some point in time)
a youtuber, though what type of videos i’d make were undetermined (2012)
a softball player (2016)
never mind that — a volleyball player (2017)
brave. at least, braver than before, which means saying yes more often! (2019)
getting better at saying no (2020)
happy. and kind. (2021)
employed (2022)
a good daughter (always)
in 2024, my motto was “let’s just live!!!” — it’s a bastardized version of “let’s all just live”, and by bastardized, i mean i left out one word because i liked the look and cadence of a three word phrase much more.
it carried pretty much the same meaning anyways.
at first, like most phrases in my current lexicon, “let’s just live!!!” started off as a joke3. a silly remark in the face of the happenings in my life — it was something to say when something went horribly wrong, and something to say when something went wonderfully right.
it became my way of looking for the good in everything, of dealing with sometimes less than ideal situations. in spite of what happened, because of it, thanks to it, etc. etc. — things went on. life went on. the earth kept spinning, the sun kept setting and rising and there would be something new on the horizon encounter the next day.
either way, no matter what happened, we would just live. and i liked the sound of that.
by the way, i don’t mean to make light of living. it is an incredibly hard thing to do.4
i hate to think about life as this thing we have to grin and bear to work our way through it, but (unfortunately) the reality is, yes, sometimes, we do. people talk about it less and less — how some days are harder to get through than others. how on some days it’s simultaneously unbearable and overwhelmingly relieving to ask for help. how some days, i just want to lie down on the floor and pet my cat and let the rest of the day pass by, unchanged.
in the modern day and age, finite human emotion/resources like attention and respect and care — things we seek quite desperately in other people — require an enormous amount of effort. it is so worth it, by god, but i will never deny nor downplay the incredible amount of work that goes into this.
when you start out with 100% of something and keep having to divide that pie, section it into smaller pieces here and there — to your friends, your parents, your partner — what part of that is left for yourself? what is leftover? is it enough?
we’ve idealized a lifestyle has become impossible to obtain. at least, for normal people who for the life of them cannot get their doctor mandated eight hours of sleep because they accidentally spent 2 hours horizontal, doom-scrolling on their phones, thereby viciously derailing the carefully meticulously planned timetable that maximizes our 5-9s schedules because the 9-5 monopolizes the precious daylight we have. we’ve all been there. at least, i have.
how are we supposed to win? how are we supposed to succeed? it’s hard! life is hard!
there’s a relief in admitting to it, and that’s precisely why i think we should start saying it more. there’s nothing bad about admitting something is hard.
we’re still doing it [life], aren’t we?
when i was younger, i think i dreamt too big.
not that my dreams were unreachable, per se, but they were vague. intangible. i waved my hands and had generalities and left it for later. for someone who really loves their plans and structure, i was also somewhat incredibly averse to mapping out my future. i didn’t want to pin it down to any single thing.
now i’m here, about to step into my mid-twenties with the new year, and nothing has gotten any clearer. if anything, my world has gotten so much bigger. expansive. the people i’ve met have changed me (i can only hope i’ve changed them in some sort of way, too), and there continues to be an endless avalanche of experiences that were had. that still need to be had. i’ve found out more things about myself, i’ve done a lot of things along the way, and still — still! i don’t know what i want to do in The Future. i don’t know how to answer do you like your job? i might never be able to.
and that’s okay! i have a bunch of other questions i want to ask, answers that i am starting to treasure just as much. things i find also meaningful, other things i find value in and value in having: are you happy? are you eating well? how are you doing? what are you up to these days?
the possibilities are endless.
it’s kind of fun, taking all these detours and turns and stops by the side of this road i’m on. i’m smelling all the flowers. i’m doing everything and anything i can, just because. taking the scenic route, not knowing what’ll happen next.
let’s just take it day by day for the moment.
let’s just live.
aug-dec 2024, wrapped (since it’s been a while since we’ve talked last)
turned 24 & went to my first friend wedding!!!! it was a 3-day celebration that was so lovely and fun. met a lot of lovely people and made so many good memories.
landed on a volleyball and rolled my ankle pretty badly mid-october. rocked that boot though.
i went on tour with k-pop group seventeen and went viral. i’m ingrained in the rat history books, babes!!!! we’re one of the 8 best moments from seventeen’s us stadium debut, according to billboard.
we are holding space for defying gravity in my car, thanks to the 2-hr long commute (roundtrip) to and from my new job. i saw wicked (2024) 2 weeks ago which reawakened a love for musicals in me. please give me recommendations.
i invested in an amc a-list subscription5 starting october, thanks to sadat + emily’s recommendations. i, too, am now encouraging you as well if you enjoy the cinemas.
as a part of my wicked fixation, i am back on tiktok to experience wickedtok content (from jonathan bailey/jeff goldbum content to ari/cynthia interviews to covers and memes). shout out to bowen yang, as well.6
reading — i powered through my book goal for this year (52) and now sit at 70 finished for the year :D
was sorely disappointed by my spotify wrapped. i want to do better next year.
just started the sex lives of college girls (2021-) on hbo max and i adore it. it’s funny, cutting, chock full of personality, while slyly poking fun at the current state of affairs and giving a small peek into the complexities of what it’s being a part of marginalized communities. there’s a camaraderie between these unlikely group of girls who become acquaintances by chance and friends by choice while navigating (what some might argue to be) some of the most formative years of your life that i love.
OH! i dyed my hair. now i have highlights!
in 2025 i’m opting the use of 3 journals, a result of browsing the hobonichi website late one night and incapable of making a decision on which techo was the right fit for me. let’s see how well i keep up with it!
in the past, i’ve never been too faithful to complicated systems where i have a 1:1 designated function for every single tiny thing that i have, but i believe in myself this time! in reality, i’m only using 2 on a daily basis — my paddington themed hobonichi weeks for my weekly tasks/calendar, my one piece themed a6 hobonichi techo for daily reflections, and a bigger undated a5 for more fun, creative experiments to be done as they happen.
my memory sucks, so i’ve gotten in the habit of taking videos, random soundbites and b-roll footage that might be usable for a vlog i’ll never edit. they’re so silly but also so, so beloved. each time i play them back i’m transported to that exact moment in time, and i remember the joy, the reason why i pulled out my phone to record in the first place.
there’s so many other things to factor in these days, too. the cost of living — and i’m not just talking from a strictly economic and finances standpoint. it’s exhausting, maintaining all the different ways we have to stay connected and plugged in and quite frankly, on all the time. when do we get to take a break? take social media for example, where everyone is so hard-pressed to put their best foot forward and keep up a flawless finish (even if the veneer is a little bit too bright and shiny, and the interior is in shambles).
it is so worth it. it’s $24.99/month, but because movies are so expensive these days, you only really need to see movies 2x a month to make your money back. you get 3 free movies a week. i always book movies before fridays (because that’s when it resets) if i know i’ll be watching more movies in one week than the other. here’s my letterboxd :D
i found out that jane wickline, who i’ve been following for years on tiktok, is now a part of the current snl cast. it feels like a personal victory and validation all rolled into one. i’m genius! i have a talent for recognizing humor! of course, i feel slight sense of duty to watch every skit that gets released on youtube.
i love love love this
karina my dearest!!! thank you so much for sharing this with us. you always remind me that it's ok to just live, that it can be a lot to do and sometimes it's all you can do. i need to get better at journalling but as someone else who has also had the epiphany that my past self is Still Here, the part about journalling really spoke to me. thank you for being such a wonderful presence in my life this year, and i can't wait to see what the future brings you!!