Happy New Years! 

2020 has been a very strange year, very hard on a lot of parametres, but I'm leaving 2020 with an optimistic feeling. There are a lot of good things happening to me in the beginning of the new year and I can't wait to get it all started! 

2020 - as we all know - has been dominated by COVID-19 which swept through the entire world and put a stop to life as we knew it before. But it's not only bad things that has happened in the wake of COVID, so many small good things have happened as well. 

When I think back to spring, the thing I think of primarily isn't COVID. I've been "lucky" enough to be front as I work in a hospital and as such still had to keep up my work. That helped maintain routine in the crazy quarantine and meant that my life kept going on as usual - which was a gift to me. Something else was on my mind, though, and it resulted in a breakdown and my old eating disorder revisiting me until I woke up one afternoon and realised there's no way I can go on like this. Instead of doing what I would have done in the past and isolated myself, I sought help from my doctor and over summer, managed to open up to my father who also helped immensely. 

In July Michan agreed to write Hospital 365 with me and the story has become a huge part of my life. It saves me from boredom, it excites me when I think of it and creating the world it has become has been something I really hold onto. It makes me smile when I read her texts and simple little thing inspires me in daily life, things I want to add. It's a wonderful feeling to be so invested in your art and I genuinely thought I had given up on writing, but with Hospital 365 I'm not sure I can ever give it up. Besides - Hospital 365 is a dream come true; a medical setting with characters that I bond to on such a realistic level. Everything about the story is something I genuinely love. 

Then in August, everything worked out perfectly so I took my grandmother to Iceland. It was her biggest dream to see Iceland before her death and she had given up on it, but there was no way I'd let her regret never going - age is but a number.  It was an incredible week. A week full of interesting experiences and a lot of happy memories. I will never forget the trip and neither will she. Her smiles on the pictures we took in Iceland were worth a thousand words. 

Fall was really tough at work, not because of COVID per se, but because of the lockdown and quaratine the workload grew immensely and a few coworkers took sick leave, leaving the rest of us to work double and triple shifts. It was hard, but it also just cemented how much I love my work. And it proved to me that I am stronger than I thought I am. So when I began searching for a new job, even though guilt set in, I kept at it - and it paid off when I got a new job at the end of November. December was spent preparing for Christmas and looking for a new apartment - and everything fell into place in the middle of December. Which meant I could start packing up. 

Now - as I'm writing this - I have 14 days left at my old job and I'm going to miss the people. I have a month before I start my new job and move into my new apartment. January is going to be full of new beginnings and I can't wait to see what 2021 will bring me. My biggest hope is a boyfriend, someone to share my life with. Now that I finally feel like an adult, feel like I have things going my way. 

My family sat and watched baby home videos from when we were children on the 26th of December. Watching the kid I once was, I finally feel like I've found back to the young girl she was - she's grown into a woman now, but no longer hiding from fear and anxiety, no longer drowning in sadness and expectations she can't live up to. I realised, as the child danced and sang in front of the stereo, that the girl who loved music so dearly she could barely walk without dancing, is still there. Now she's dancing in her apartment, on the sidewalks, at work, singing along to musicals she loves and is no longer ashamed to love music - just like she was back when she was five.

HAPPY NEW YEARS. 

May 2021 bring all your wishes.