When I was younger, I always felt beautiful.

As superficial as it may seem, when you’re younger, the whole world is bursting with beauty—skies that could burst into a myriad of colors from early morning to late nights, oceans that could lap gently at your toes to crashing angrily against the shore, or summer showers that you could see literally cooling the pavement, to the people around you—the unique sent of your mother’s perfume, or the way your dog smells after a bath, pink tongue large and looking to lick your cheek, or the scent of your grandparent’s garage—everything seemed beautiful and everything seemed untouchable, especially you.

When I was younger, I always felt smart. I picked up reading at an early age, due in part to having extra time with my mother, but part in because I love reading and learning and travelling somewhere different and new and exciting all from the nook of my couch. And as you get older, you get these new opportunities, these new ideas and opinions and viewpoints and it is all so new, but it’s exciting and different and at times, it can be overwhelming.

When I was younger, I always felt kind. I always felt like I treated people like they were treasured members of my little world—always with a radiant, gap toothed smile, with a laugh, with a hug or anything that resembled kindness and grace and joy.

But, as I’ve gotten older, all of those things that I felt when I was younger, have disappeared into anxieties over body image, how I look against others, over how smart I am compared to others, how nice or mean I am to others. And these insecurities have been eating at me for a longer time than I would like to admit. Typing this now, I feel a sense of peace with the words because they really feel like the good, honest truth—something I haven’t done to myself in quite some time.

I am writing this as an almost legal adult, who is still very young in the grand scheme of everything, who still has a lot to learn, who still wants to learn more, but someone who recognizes that she has a lot to learn about herself, about who she is, about who she could be. No, this isn’t a big political commentary, or some dazzling piece of work. But to me, this is about making a concerted effort of finding myself within the next two year period—about creating a healthy mind, body and spirit so that I can be the best me that I can be.

I think a lot of the times, on social media especially, there is this sort of urge to try and portray some idealized life—always standing in the perfect way, or acting a certain way, writing the perfect caption, selecting the perfect filter—but it leads to this unrealistic expectation of what life should be, and I think that it can really mess with a persons psyche. Even mine.

For the next 730 days, I am going to do my best to push myself to try and find an understanding of who I really am, of what I like and trying to understand who I want to be. I’ll be aiming to step outside of my comfort zone—to trying new things—and to trying to figure out who I want to be and how to get there. I’ll be doing my best to keep this page updated, but I will be posting weekly to my social media accounts to keep an updated log of my progress.

I hope this ramble made some ounce of sense, and maybe that it resonates with even a single person, but in the crazy world we live in today, I think now more than ever it is important to figure out who we truly are, not just being who we think we should be.