Hello hello, my dearests! It’s been a while. Which honestly feels like the default opening for this blog at this point. Time passes, life happens, I disappear, WordPress charges my card, I return. The circle of life.
That email is genuinely why I’m here. “Your subscription has been renewed.” Nothing humbles you faster.
But it also made me realize this is my third year of blogging!! Which is… kind of insane? I’m extremely proud of myself. Not because I’m consistent (I am absolutely not), but because I keep coming back. I ghost this blog the way I ghost people when I’m overwhelmed, but I never deleted it. And that tells me how meaningful it is to me.
Also, I’m paying for this. And I refuse to let this be another expense I pretend doesn’t exist, like that phone line from another country I have no idea how to just cancel!
Anyway… I didn’t come here planning to write about the new year, even though I do love new years. I love the drama of them. The illusion of control. The idea that time is like, “clean slate, go again!”
I like that it feels like an important milestone, something to close off and jump right into a new one. I’m not talking about resolutions here, even though I’m not anti-resolutions. I am anti-bullying yourself into becoming unrecognizable by February, though. There’s a difference.
If you know me, you know I love celebrations, birthdays, holidays, and everything most people call “cheesy” to sound superior (BLEKH!). Let me have my sparkle, man. Life is hard. We deserve some confetti from time to time.
Anyway. Somewhere between the renewal email and the new year energy, I realized there was one lesson from 2025 that refused to leave me alone, no matter how hard I tried to think about literally anything else. And trust me, there were many lessons. Some beautiful. Some absolutely shattering. I could write at least ten posts about 2025 alone. I loved all of it. But this one keeps coming back, so I’m starting here.
A few weeks ago, I found an old novel I had started years ago. Like, embarrassingly long ago. A very personal one. Written before I learned how to soften myself so people wouldn’t get uncomfortable. I opened it fully expecting to cringe, close the document, and congratulate myself on growth.
Instead, my fingers, without permission, took the keyboard and ran with it. I continued writing it. My thoughts just picked up where they left off, like this was a totally normal thing to do. Which was unsettling, but also kind of comforting. Like running into an old friend and realizing you still talk the same way.
My friend asked me how much I think I’ve changed from the girl I was back then. And my brain immediately went into presentation mode. I should say something reasonable. Fifty percent sounds good. Balanced. Mature. Surely I grew up. Surely I learned things. Surely I’m not the same girl anymore, right?
But the truth caught me off guard.
Reading that novel didn’t feel like looking at a past version of myself. It felt like running back to her. I recognized her immediately. The openness. The lack of self-editing. The audacity of saying things without adding a disclaimer. And I realized I missed her.
For years, I’ve been obsessed with changing. Growing. Maturing. All very adult words that sound impressive in conversations. But if I’m being real, a lot of that effort was about abandoning parts of myself that felt “inconvenient.”
I’ve spent most of my life feeling like I was slightly outside my own life. Like everyone else had a guidebook and I was improvising badly. So I kept adjusting. Smoothing edges. Trying to become someone who fit better instead of asking why I felt the need to fit at all.
2025 didn’t dramatically transform me. There was no big reveal. It just slowly peeled things back. One layer at a time. It came up in conversations, in meeting new people, in reactions, and in hearing from old friends. Until I was standing there with myself, very familiar, slightly exposed, and honestly kind of relieved.
Because I am still her.
I’m still soft. Still romantic. Still hopeful in ways that feel wildly impractical. I’m still awkward. Still giggly. Still deeply unserious at the wrong times. I’m still introspective. Still capable of romanticizing struggle when I should probably just sleep. And I’m still whimsical. Imaginative. Slightly absurd. The kind of person the world doesn’t quite know what to do with yet.
I didn’t grow out of these things. I managed them. I hid them.
A couple of months ago, I was sitting with a complete stranger who had just finished reading my script and was giving me notes. He’s much more experienced than me. In career and in life. Which basically means he’s much older than I am. We sat together for about an hour, talking through the work, which, if we’re being honest, was mostly a therapy session disguised as a “professional meeting.” and just before we wrapped up, he looked at me all guilty and asked if I’m okay.
I laughed and said, “So what you’re basically telling me is that I need therapy, right?”
He smiled and said, “No. What I’m telling you is that you need to stand in front of a mirror and truly see yourself.” (Damn, you, Europeans!)
That line stayed with me longer than most advice ever did.
Because yes, I grew up. Obviously. I changed, of course. But at my core, I’m still the same person who wrote that novel. Still drawn to the same questions. Still moved by the same things. Still reacting to the world with the same softness I once tried very hard to discipline out of myself.
What 2025 taught me is that I don’t need to reinvent myself every few years like a rebrand. I need to stop abandoning myself every time I think I’m not enough as I am.
So this year, I’m not chasing a new version of myself. I’m coming back to the old one. The unedited one. The slightly cringe one. The one that feels things deeply and doesn’t always know what to do with herself.
And honestly? I like her.
Happy new year, my dearests. Thank you to every person that allowed me to be myself, to every person who encouraged those parts of me I tried hard to resist, and to every person that made existing a little more enjoyable.
I love you all, let’s all stand in front of our mirrors and truly see ourselves, add an embrace to that, too.
XOXO
FFB
Full-Fat Blah 
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