I wrote this five years ago today.

I was a recent grad in possession of a one-way ticket to New York, exploding with romantic notions about the next chapter of my life (like thinking I’d actually hand write all of my city adventures in a leatherbound notebook).

There is exactly one entry after this (the day I arrived, May 21st), then naturally, I took my ramblings to the Internet. But it didn’t matter how I documented, just that I was documenting — something that’s been an inherent and essential part of my life for as long as I can remember. 

The most important thing to come of this fondness for memory-keeping is not just looking back and thinking, what a great experience!; but thinking, the girl who wrote this is not the same girl who is reading it now. We measure and define personal growth by our own milestones (change in behavior, outlook, age, maturity, appearance), but for me, that growth has been most discernible in my writing — what I have to say and how I have to say it.

For example, five years ago, I used phrases like “waiting a lifetime for this opportunity” and ignored every possible chance to put an apostrophe in “it’s” and constructed these bubbly cursive sentences about big city hopes and dreams…

That fumbling young idealist definitely still exists, but she is growing up, and she knows this because that handwritten journal entry doesn’t just make her smile, it makes her cringe. And that is a very good thing.

(I am currently working my 5-year anniversary post, so in the meantime, catch up on the previous three here: two years in New York // three years in New York // four years in New York.)

(UPDATE: My anniversary post, A Letter to My 22-year-old Self, is now up.)