I have friends from the East Coast visiting this week, and giving them the full tour of my life and city, makes me realize how different Seattle is from Pittsburgh. Its weird to imagine not growing up here, and never having seen the sort of nature or cultural quirks that I experience on a regular basis.

I was looking through our old blog archives and it really is surreal how much I’ve changed, in so many aspects of my life. My personal style has changed a lot in the past few years, and while at first I mourned how “lame” and “boring” I had become, I soon have come to accept it. I recently cleared out my closet, clearing out years worth of clothes that were staples for my 15 year old self. My wardrobe now is a slightly more mature, slightly more toned down version of what I wore as a blogger. I’ve begun to value quality over quantity, appreciate the way clothes fit more than the way they look on a hanger.

I stopped blogging the fall of my senior year, before I knew where I was going to college, before a lot of things about me snapped. I worried about so many little things, about my grades, about my future. And I still worry now, but for different reasons. While before I worried about getting to the future, now I worry about maintaining the present. 

I was also surprised by how surface everything was, how much I talked about trivialities of my life and day, and how little I actually wrote about what was on my mind. I was an introvert trying to find a platform to express myself, but too afraid to actually articulate what I wanted to say. Perhaps in a few years I will look back at this tumblr and remark on the same thing, but I feel like I lay everything out so much barer now, am trying to share these thoughts I used to keep locked in my head with other people.

Sometimes I miss blogging, I miss the daily ritual of taking photos or composing a post, commenting on other people’s blogs, having that corner of the internet for myself. But I can’t go back. I’ve changed. And more than that, blogging has changed. I started reading a select few blogs again recently and was shocked by not only how much people had grown up in my absence (people getting married! Moving across the country!), but also by how slick blogging had become. And while these blogs are professional looking and beautiful, blogging has lost that everyday, ordinary charm that drew me into that community in the first place. It was something that my 15 year old self really needed, and something that really defined my life for a couple of years. And for that I am grateful.

While I feel a lot like a kid still, I definitely feel very different than the person encapsulated in those posts. I guess I’m a little bit more of an adult than I thought.

If you consider getting rid of it, get rid of it. 96% sure you won’t miss it later.

I’m not sure how accurate this is, but I feel like there is some sort of societal association between between extroverts and optimism and introverts and pessimism.  Like extroverts are these fun happy bubbly people, and introverts are gloomy and huddled in a corner alone or something, which is almost completely unfounded in reality. A lot of fun bubbly people are extroverted, but that’s not the only type of extrovert, nor is that the only form is optimism. I don’t know, something to ponder.

That weird moment when you realize you miss your friends’ parents.

I’m pretty unextraordinary, and you know what? I’m okay with that. That doesn’t mean I can’t do great things or achieve anything monumental, but I, myself am just averagely above average.  

Seeing and talking to all these admitted students makes me remember what it was like the first time I visited; that feeling of “this could be my home for four years.” And now, almost two years later it is, and at this point, everything about campus is so familiar that my feet instinctively know the shortest way to each class.