wouldn't you know it...

this is me at my high school graduation, circa ten months ago.

this is me when I first started here at the university

and this is me, just a couple of days ago.

Wow. Weird to think that it's already been that long, and that in a couple of days I will be done with my first year of college. A year out of high school. A year of college complete. And where has it brought me? 

Umm...... gimme a minute. :)

Keeping a blog has been helpful in tracking what I'm thinking about, what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, etc. Even if I don't write specifics, reading older posts I can remember how life was when I wrote them. 
So that's been nice...

Anyways.
I was really super homesick and lonely for a while

being on my own for the first time, a thousand miles away from my friends and family resulted in some flailing and floundering for a time

I felt very alone

and I suck at making friends.

but I learned to be more independent

and I learned who I could always rely on.

I've learned that happiness is a choice

and I've started to figure out who and what is really important to me.

and I've made some lovely new friends and had an incredible amount of fun :)

I was so afraid of change just a year ago. I loved my life. I still love that part of my life so, so much - it was wonderful. And I was blessed enough to have it so good that I missed it so terribly much when life changed. But I've grown. And now, on the other side of everything, I am happier, more myself, and more content than I ever thought I would be :) 

So where was I a year ago? Happy :)

Where I am today? .... Happy :) 

But it's a different kind of happy. I think I'm also more mature. Hopefully anyways :)

"One year older and wiser too...." :) anyways....

All I know is, I have grown. And I have learned a lot, 
about myself and about who I want to be. 

And that's something I couldn't have done, someone I couldn't have become,

 without everything else that has happened to me.

So for that, I am thankful :) 

~~~

And now, a series of relevant quotations :)

Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the "high priest of good things to come."

Jeffrey R. Holland

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones

as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire

Francois de la Rouchefoucauld

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.

Charles Morgan

I may not have gone where I intended to go, 

but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. 

Douglas Adams

Yay, Life!! :) :)