Monday Motivator: BIRTHDAY EDITION

I've never been big on New Years' Eve. I feel the expectations and hype are too high and the resulting night is typically a letdown. In fact, my most eventful NYE in recent memory was with my sister's friends in St. Louis, where many of the pictures looked like this:

So where am I going with this? And why am I talking about NYE in August? Because today is my birthday - my personal New Year. Included with the hype of the new year is the expectation to make XXXX year the "best year yet." I'm never quite recovered from my post-spending/gifting/gifted/food hangover (Christmas) enough to make a list of things I want to change about myself in the upcoming year. But birthdays - birthdays are the best time to evaluate my life and see where/who I want to be in a year.

24 was a great year. I took charge of my physical health and am starting 25 in the best physical condition I've been in ever, really. It was also the year that I started exploring new continuing education opportunities (I took an online grant writing class and have signed up for an HTML class this September) and took an interest in reading (Find me on Goodreads). It was also the first year I felt that I well-managed seeing my friends post-college. These were all things I had struggled with (and from what I can tell, most people do) when transitioning from college to the "real world."

But, being a total cliché here, I think 25 will be even better. Using the things I did at 24 to better myself, I intend to position myself as a better athlete, employee, student, and most importantly, friend. To give you abridged version, I will be writing more, learning new skills (computer and otherwise), and spending more time with my friends and family. Updates on how that goes to come next year - for now, just let me celebrate my first day of being mid-twenties (ACK).