Tomorrow marks six months since I made this Substack. Six months! That is half a year, ⅔ the length of a pregnancy, and twice as long as it takes for skin care products to show results. Crazy!
When I look back at the past six months, it seems like the time flew while also crawling by at a snail’s pace. The days felt long, but all at once, on my near daily walks, I noticed that spring became summer and then summer became fall. Before I know it, it will be winter–after all, somehow Halloween is now already less than a week away!
I made a life updates post when I first made this page and then again when I had been using it for three months, so I do not feel that I need to rehash everything that has happened in the past six months. That would be a long, long post. However, I will share some of the things that have happened since I last shared my official life updates at the end of July. Here we go:
I turned 25.
Birthdays are a big deal for some people and not at all important to others. Personally, while I far prefer a quiet birthday dinner and no gifts, birthdays are still important to me in that I spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to grow older and what I would like to focus on in the upcoming year. Twenty-five felt like an especially important birthday because I am now one quarter of a century old, and my prefrontal cortex is fully developed. Huzzah!
On the whole, though, not much feels different. I have now had the experience of rolling the money in one job’s 401k into another job’s IRA, Ian and I have been looking at new cars while mine has been hemorrhaging oil, and I developed my first gray hair, but otherwise adulthood feels about the same as it has since I left college. Sometimes this stage of my life feels bittersweet. This past weekend, I got together with some friends from college at an Airbnb in Pittsburgh and we wound up talking about how much we miss the days when we all lived in the same town and could see each other weekly, if not daily. Other times, I think of people I’ve known, or know of, who didn’t get to see 25 and feel blessed to have had that one gray hair pop up on my scalp.
I’ve been working and writing.
When I created this Substack, I was in between jobs and having somewhat of a life crisis. Honestly, it was only one of many identity crises I’ve had over my 25 years of life, but this one was particularly hard-hitting. After devoting myself to school and then work with all of my heart, soul, and mind for my entire life, I found myself extremely burnt out and found my body demanding rest.
That was a really, really challenging time. There is no sugarcoating it. My mental health and physical health were both in shambles, and on top of that, taking time off work had me questioning my self-worth and purpose. That is some heavy stuff. The best thing to come out of that time in my life is that I got really into writing again. I have always kept a diary, but while taking time off from work, I started using this Substack to share my thoughts with the world, and I started working on a piece of fiction again.
I have said it before, but writing creatively has given me so much purpose and fulfillment these past several months. Even if I never let anyone beyond the two friends who are currently my beta readers look at the nearly 30,000 word story I have been writing day after day, a spark of magic that was gone for a long, long time has returned to my life, and I will never regret that.
In the past six months, I have also started working as a service coordinator for an early intervention agency that falls under the state of West Virginia’s Bureau of Public Health. I am currently working part-time, which works very well for me (I do have somewhat of a complex about not being an equal breadwinner in my household at this time, but that is a topic for another day). It is also worth noting that this is my third job in the field of maternal and child health, which is ever so ironic, as I do not think I ever want to have biological children. But hey, this is my professional niche, and I love it. And I love that working part-time affords me the time to write daily.
I got married.
This is the piece of news that I am by far most excited to share. After nearly six years of dating and a year and a half of being engaged, Ian and I got married at Cooper’s Rock State Park on October 8. It was a cold day, but we were married in a pavilion and had a fire going in the fireplace. We also had blankets, bagels, and coffee.
Ian and I spent well over a year debating when and how we would get married. One idea was to invite all of our family and friends, a crowd of 300+ individuals. This idea was quickly discarded. Another idea was to elope and tell no one. We actually had a date planned to do this before backing out–we still went on our planned honeymoon to Asheville, though. In the end, we went with an idea right in between these two options.
In the woods, Ian and I got married in front of 9 family members. We then had lunch with about 40 at a hotel nearby. One of our closest friends was our officiant. Another one of our closest friends was our photographer.
Despite not being “wedding people” and dreading wedding planning to the point that we couldn’t decide what we would do for over a year, October 8 was so incredibly perfect. And now, more than anything, I am so excited to be married to my favorite person. We do not yet have our official pictures back, but I will leave you with a cellphone shot:
Until next time,
Alexa
I enjoy your writing.
Congratulations on your marriage ❤️❤️
Quick!! Write something more.