My first "I'm a grown up" moment...

A lot has happened within the last year. This time last year I was studying for my final finals, I graduated college on December 18th and I moved home. Then I was unemployed for two months, landed a SWEET job with an awesome company called Experts Exchange and worked for there eight months. I grew in a relationship and watched that relationship end. I quit my sweet job and moved to San Diego for my dream job. I spent a week in San Diego unpacking my life to just live out of a suitcase traveling for three straight weeks for work. I came back to the house that was supposed to be awesome and it turned out to be anything but. I put a deposit on the apartment I've wanted in live in for years and I will be moving (again) soon. I learned my love of cooking and buy cooking magazines in grocery store lines rather than Cosmo. My days at work now consist of reading applications and talking with some awesome high school students who are as stoked as I am about Point Loma Nazarene University rather than mulling over A/B test results of a new page on the website.

All in all, my life has changed a lot in the past year and I have done a lot of growing up. This is the first time I've lived on my own, not in campus housing and hundreds of miles from my parents. The reality of rent, bills, responsibilities and everything else that comes with "growing up" has slowly been becoming reality to me.

That was until last night after work... I had my first "whoa, I'm a big girl now" moment.

I was walking out of my office at Point Loma and I could see through the palm trees, downtown San Diego all lit up and utterly beautiful. I stood at my car for a minute or two in the freezing wind, but didn't care. I wanted to look at the lights. I don't know what it was about the moment, but it was definitely an impacting one.

I'm looking forward to continuing my "growing up" stage and seeing where my life goes from here. I turn 23 on Saturday and I'm actually kind of nervous. I'm getting further and further from my teenage years and feel this sense of ever growing sense of "you have to be responsible now kid" mounting. I know I can do it and I have nothing to worry about, but it's still stressful to think about sometimes. I will never lose the kid inside me, but there comes a time when you just have to grow up.

Until next time...