Hey, it’s been a while. For those who’ve forgotten, my name is Rachel, just Rachel. I’m 30 now, fast approaching 31, and this past year has been a bit of a whirlwind, so let me catch you up.

Since last November, I…

Traveled

I took two solo trips (international); first to Ireland to tour schools and explore work opportunities and later to Spain, where I turned 30 and fulfilled all of my Cheetah Girl fantasies.

I visited Tampa, Florida, and Phoenix, Arizona, and I was so fortunate as to make some really special connections in both places.

Leaned toward love, rather than away from it

I got extremely done up (2x) and stood alongside two very good friends as a bridesmaid on their respective wedding days.

I went on a couple of dates and proved to myself that I am actually really open to getting my heart broken, for the right person—though I can somewhat confidently say, I don’t think I have met them yet…

Learned

I earned an online certificate from Cornell University in Project Management (my pride in this accomplishment has shifted slightly since the Jane Doe case came to light, but I refuse to discount the work I put in and the sacrifices I made to make it happen).

Leveraged

I applied to two new jobs (that I was qualified for because of the certificate program), both an ocean away; neither panned out, and I’m grateful for that—life had bigger plans.

Lept

I mended some fences (it was time), moved back out of my childhood bedroom, bought a house (unrelated to the fences), and realized on more than one occasion that I am only mortal (very related to the house, among other things).

…and beyond the big stuff I could go on and on about all the “smaller” moments that made this year what it was—but if I dove into that we would be here for quite a while.

So now what? That’s where I should take you, right? What’s next?

I always find it funny that, in the face of hearing about accomplishments or witnessing radical moments of achievement—like winning a gold medal—we are trained to almost immediately move to the next question, the “Now what?” or “What’s next?” We rarely let ourselves sit in it because we are supposed to keep moving, running, chasing—next-ing(?) the next thing.

And to be fair, if you asked me, I could tell you, for me—next is:

…

Or, I could be a bit more honest; I could tell you that next is slowing down:

…

We could shift the conversation to corporate and I could pivot to tell you that from a professional perspective:

What’s next: a more honest answer…

Look, truth is… I could bury you in my up next because trust me, I have it, I’m in it, I know it is there—but if you looked at me, saw me, and you asked me, genuinely, “what’s next?”—I would tell you with tired eyes that I am far less concerned with “next” than I am with “now”; because for all the projects in the pipeline, all the adventures I have planned, all the weddings and baby showers and birthdays and holidays I have to attend, not everything that is coming next is inherently good. Some of what is next is change and while not all change is bad, some changes require adjustments that I am not eager to attend to quite yet.

Instead of “What’s next?” ask, “what is now?”

When I started AwkwardnAdulting back in 2018-2019 it was never meant to be excessively serious. My staff and I, all in our early 20’s wrote about dating and working and failing to “adult” based on what we were lead to believe “adulting” was about.

And somewhere along the way that shifted, and we all shifted and we fell into versions of adulting that we may have been expected to be? I don’t know, I am rambling a bit—

I have a habit of writing eulogies; this isn’t that, and that’s intentional.

Before this post, eulogies and memorials were, more often than not, what would bring me out of a hiatus. Lost people, lost innocence, lost elections (not anymore), lost composure at yet another headline that made my blood boil. And that much was intentional because, for me, those were the easy things to write. Being loud about loss in one focused moment helped me to quiet it elsewhere. And to my own credit, I guess I am good at memorializing people(?) or maybe I just process grief better on a page than I can in my head—in any event, I could feel myself being drawn back here enough to decide that, instead of my next post being a eulogy, my now post could be a bit of a victory lap. [In short— I realized that I owed it to myself to take a moment and write down all the incredible things that I achieved at the tail end of my 20s into my first year of my 30s].

First now, then next

Right now, today, this week, this month (after a record year), I am making no effort to race into “what’s next,” and I am making every effort to hold on to “what’s now.”

—what’s now is: family, friends, and long drives that vastly shorten long weekends.

What’s now is focusing on me, just Rachel, and on the people I love enjoying the present and holding tight to one another, and beyond that, for now at least, nothing else matters.

So here is to a record year. A future that can wait. And a now that will be worth talking about later.