Being 23 + Welcome to my Blog!

It’s 10:29 PM on a Sunday night in March. Chicago is quiet, in its own way. I’m 23 years old, in my first apartment, and I’m finally doing this.

This, being, writing.

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to put my thoughts into words and get after this small but mighty little dream of mine. Honestly, I never really thought I was all that good at writing until maybe… college? At least, I never saw it as a hobby or something I could enjoy doing. I started to write in my college newspaper, telling stories weekly in the culture section. I wrote a story about a sustainable initiative the fashion organization was putting on, one about a Jewish choir student who wanted to write a song in Hebrew for the acapella choir, and one about my friend Hailey who was trying to start a movement in education. She was from Alaska. I thought she was the shit.

Those stories are so different but have one thing in common. They’re stories. Duh.

I think what I truly love to do is tell stories. It’s part of the reason why I have always loved performing. Getting to study someone else’s life and form myself into a character in order to authentically tell a story. I won awards for my performances, which at the time, was local validation that what I was doing was pretty good. I thought so at the time. If you could have seen the size of my ego, you’d never want to listen to me again.

But that ego eventually deflated once I realized I didn’t like the competitive nature of performing as a career. I couldn’t “take the heat” you could say. But I still found ways to foster storytelling in my life. It’s part of the reason why I love music so much. Each song telling a story so profound it needs only 2-3 minutes to be told. Crazy.

But I want to write more. I want to write to change perspective, to help, to educate, and to relate. I would say I write a considerable amount in my corporate job, but not about the topics I want to. I feel as though I could provide a good chunk of knowledge to the world. Just about life. About love. About growth. About strength and weakness. About moving away for the first time. About finding the beautiful in the simple. About creating a life you’re proud of. (still working on that one).

But I want this little entry to hopefully be the start of something. Whatever it may be. Let it bring, what it brings.

Hopefully some life changing event will happen soon to propel my motivation to write. Or, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s just start here. On this Sunday night, looking out at the city lights and the stars. Being 23.