Another Year Older, Maybe Another Year Wiser

 There is nothing interesting about turning 24. It rhymes with Tung Tung Tung Sahur. That's the best I could come up with.

When there's nothing fun to hide behind like "Nobody likes you when you're twenty-three" (or the Jordan year), "Feelin' 22" and "it's supposed to be fun turning 21, I guess it's time for serious reflection. Around two weeks after I turned 23, my entire world changed. An idea became a tangible thing. A tangible thing within three months was the target of a harassment campaign. I worked three stable jobs. I secured my dream clerkship. It's been so exhausting, yet so rewarding.

I've been dwelling a lot on the late Dolly Parton's words: "Find out who you are and do it on purpose." There's a sea of social media posts about how everything you wanted in your awkward years was right, after all. Your whole life to an extent is finding out who you are. Some days it was a curse to be the odd one out, and now it feels like the greatest gift I was ever given. This year was the year I took all twenty-three of them and threw it at the wall to see what stuck.

The career path I chose is not sitting in a suit in a stuffy office, contrary to popular belief. It looks like defending a museum of everything I've ever loved. There were those early days on a website that no longer exists where a girl taught me about Phonto. She's still one of my closest friends. It's every weeknight on Discord spent with my best friends. I don't care about how much of a loser that makes me. It is every fanwork that I lost sleep over because it just that damn good and how I took notes in my head about it to be a better writer. It's even the roar of a crowd cheering for the home team. Never forget your roots, they come in handy at the strangest times. 

It's a selfish pursuit to find a niche like this and be so obnoxious about it. I selfishly want to protect all of it because my friends are inside the computer. Yet, it's a perfect balance of selfish and selfless on the scales of justice. I get to give back. I want to show everyone you can do this without sacrificing the part of you that makes you who you are. If there's more of that, there's less repression on expression. Thus, ironically benefitting me. So, I put on my fashion suit, get up there, and do it not only on purpose, but with purpose.