Finally! A new year!

I can only speak for myself when I say that I am incredibly excited for the new year. All the memes and the GIF's of feeling beat up and abused by 2016 are pretty accurate. Unfortunately, that's the truth for other people as well.

Now even though I'm 20, although age should not matter, I feel like this personally was one of the hardest years. I went through a lot. From learning to let go of people, adjusting to a new lifestyle and doing the best for myself, I have been put in situations that no one my age should have to go through. And it sucked having to go through them. But I was fortunate to have go through all of it, the good and the bad.

And while it's easy to focus on the bad that has happened, we need to remind ourselves that it really is all about the good that has come out of the year. On social media, the moments that are part of our "highlights" reel only capture half of the story. If we include the bad things that happened, we can also see the progress that we have made personally.

Point being, I think that we've all learned some valuable lessons. I know I learned from everything that has come from this year. Most of which I would have learned later in life under worse situations. But handling them at such a young age allowed me to bounce back much better than others. So with new knowledge, I look forward to putting my best foot forward. Because we shouldn't have just a "new year, new me" mentality, but a "new day, new me" mentality.

So 2017, I can't wait to apply the lessons I've learned.