ten twelfths

So it's November now.

The days are so much shorter. You can feel the crisp air of autumn when you stand in the shade or in the night air, even if the daytime temperature is still so ridiculously Southern Californian.

Another year is in its final months. Time flies, and just how fast it goes amazes me more every year.

I'm still reeling from those 31 days of October. It was one of the most fun months of my life. The weekends and weekdays were filled with San Francisco, College Reunion, Las Vegas Birthday, Halloween, Kickball, Downtown...I think I spent maybe five nights at home the entire month...it's always a hypersocial month but this year it was absolutely relentless. And even though it's been a crazy fun relentless year, I am now seeing it all and my current experiences with more perspective, a larger grasp on what's going on with me and my relationship to good times, to the place I'm at in life, and to my understanding of myself.

The year of being 26 was truly transformational, and while I love to do yearly reviews at the New Year, and it was hard to not want to do one around my birthday. I'll save a more in-depth and less vague review for two months from now, to keep the pattern.

But there is change going on inside me.
I'm seeing myself in a new light, remembering parts of myself that have lied dormant, coming back as I make plans for the future and do the work to get there.
I've been learning that I need to revise the way I see and describe myself. Some things that I would have said before are becoming more the exception than the rule.
And somewhere along the last 365 days I have let go of the reins, with at least one of my hands. My grip on my desire for a purposeful and amazing life remains tight. But with the other hand I have let go of so many expectations, fears, and mental frameworks for what things I do and do not like, should and shouldn't do, things that are and are not possible... the collection of moments where I've found myself doing things I never imagined or considered doing before has had an indelible impact on me.

To quote a friend, and know I will quote her again at the end of the year, "There are years in our lives that will always stand out as a year of years. A year you came into with one life, and walked out of with another." In a much less dramatic way than my friend, my year as a 26 year old felt quite like that. I keep picturing that scene in Garden State, but instead of Natalie Portman it's Time, saying to me with a winking smile "26? It'll change your life I swear."