What did 25 bring? Here’s what I know

If at 16 you’d told me on my 25th birthday I’d be a single college dropout with 50 dollars to my name and a b cup I probably would have cried… but you’d also have to mention that I lived in a tent in the middle of the Yukon territories picking mushrooms with the best, at Pigeon Mountain Motel in Dead Mans Flats with my orphan family from around the world, my car travelling the entire west coast, in my very own beach shack in Byron Bay Australia and a bungalow in Thailand. You’d have to tell me how I’d climbed the Rocky Mountains, swam with seals on Salt Spring Island, sharks in Aow Leuk, dolphins in the Florida Keys, sea turtles on the Great Barrier Reef and elephants in Chang Mai. That I dipped my toes in the coldest water in Canada, natural hot springs on the Alaska highway and Queensland’s Tea Tree Lake. That I’ve watched the sun rise in the most easterly point in the world, witnessed it never set at the summer solstice party in Dawson City and for the past few months go down beautifully every night on Koh Tao. To this I also might have cried, a different kind of tear though.

In the first quarter of my lifetime the most important thing I’ve realized is that the lifetime itself is not so easily defined. There’s no need to restrict our truest version of success to better reflect the one imagined for us by society. I DON’T HAVE TO DO WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING, drive that message home. If it excites you, fuels passion, makes you feel alive and present your reality is just as genuine and as tangible as anyone else’s, maybe even more so. Happiness doesn’t stem from owning things, owning property, owning cars, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about making shit, creating lasting memories, and maybe, if you’re clever enough, making the world you’re so lucky to live in a little more pleasant. Success is completely relative to the individual and to argue anything else is just a waste of energy. So keep doing you, unapologetically. Fill the days with whatever makes you feel whole and quit giving a fuck about what you “should be doing”, because I guarantee the people who are doing what you think you should be are at the same kind of crossroads.