I Don't Like Saying, "New year, new me."

For some reason, I hate the phrase, “new year, new me!”

Not that it genuinely irks my nerves but that everybody says it for the first two weeks of the new year and then poof, its gone. It really is a good affirmation but it's always so short lived.

This semester, I’ve decided to be the phrase, not just say it.

While I was home during winter break, I found myself in a lot of new, awkward, and different learning experiences. None of them were necessarily voluntary but I’ve got some new insight under my belt.

They’re kind of goofy but here’s what I experienced over break:

For starters, I found out that I really need to learn how to shuffle cards. Not that I will be joining any card shuffling clubs at school but when your family from down south comes over and it's time to play spades, you gotta be on your A game and show them that you haven’t lost your “black skills” since they’ve moved away.

Instead of hearing the crisp noise of each card intertwining within the deck, you see my eyes get big and a sloppy deck of cards in front of me. I thought no one was paying attention to me shuffling because all my uncles and aunts were talking over each other, drinking, and laughing. Meanwhile, my aunt Odessa, one of the eldest, and the “cheater,” was staring at me the whole time. She puts me on blast and says, “Aw, nah! She can’t play, she don’t know how to shuffle.”

In actuality, nobody cared that I wasn’t good at it but the look of disapproval on my aunts face when she looked at the sloppy deck I shuffled and looked back at me was when I knew I needed to learn how to shuffle cards.

The awkward experiences came from the daily things I forgot about in my life in Minneapolis. Being back in downtown Minneapolis, seeing everyone on mission (literally), and taking the train was all exciting and inspiring again but seeing homeless again for the first time or being inches away from being hit when your actually being a conscious jay-walker– was not fun.

I mean I have the right-away anyways! It only takes one careless driver to end your life or ruin your day. I mean taking the bus always has its pros and cons. I am probably the fatest, skinny girl you’ll know but when I am about miss a bus, my running skills become pro and I will, I like to call it, be dippin’!

I was leaving from the IDS Tower to go to an interview at The Jungle Theater. My google maps says, to walk down 7th and cross the street at Hennepin. While I’m walking in that direction, I remember just taking in the feeling again of being on-the-go. Not paying attention to the fact that with 20 min to spare, that’s how long it was going to take me to get there. I start seeing this guy ahead of me sprinting. I knew it was bus related and assumed that if I didn’t run, worse case scenario, I miss my bus, and I have to wait for the next one. Classic Erianna moment, it’s not a big deal and I just continue to walk.

I make it to Hennepin. I look left then right and there’s the 4L, only two blocks away. I look back left and the jay-walker inside of me goes, “GO!” and I run across the street, barley getting honked at and wallah– I’ve made my bus just in matter of seconds.

Taking the bus is a ride full of anxiety and adventure, especially when you’re taking it somewhere new. It’s awkwardly fun. Because once you’ve made it to your destination, for me, I get a sense of completion, completing the challenge.

Feel free to stop here if you’re bored. But if you like to hear me talk, keep reading.

But the biggest learning lesson I took back with me to Fargo was that adults aren’t really “adults,” they're just bigger versions of themselves.

Random but when I entered into my 20s, I had very high expectations of what adults should be, do, act, and sound like. Unfortunately, there’s no specific example but out of my interactions with my ‘adult” friends I’ve learned that there should be no standard. And just because they’re older doesn’t give them a pass or stereotype for being mature.

I decided to take that to heart and just start acting like the adult I want to be. How I expect them to respond, act, or talk to me is how I’m deciding to just be on a regular basis with everyone.

This is why adulting is so hard. 1. It’s a social construct (because no one really knows how to, it’s just made up) and 2. It takes time.

Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that this year I will tap into some personal growth and most importantly get these grades!

It’s so funny how college is never really about college and the classes. It’s mostly about you and growth as a young adult and figuring shit out in your head 95 percent of the time.

Cheers to the “New year, new me!” (still hate saying that).

Happy new year! Catch you on next weeks blog!

Thanks for reading!

E