5 Years & Now
Photo from New Year’s Day 2020
Hello!
What a strange time to be making an appearance, over a year later. I set this blog aside as I focused on grad school and other things that needed to take priority in my life. Since I graduated with my MBA in April, I’ve had an unanticipated amount of time to reflect – not only on this blog, but also just going through past photos and memories. What a beautiful thing it is to remember. Matt and I may not have taken our European vacation after graduation like we hoped, or gone on the road trips we wanted, or visited the friends and family we planned to see – but wow. I have so many incredible gifts of memories that I rarely pause to look at and appreciate, so what a perfect time to remember them now. When looking through this blog as a resource for a good amount of those memories, it wasn’t until I went way back that I realized I started this over five years ago! So happy five years to Love, Maddily!
“What a beautiful thing it is to remember”
When I began this blog in January of 2015, I had no idea that I would be here five years later. And by “here,” I don’t just mean in a pandemic, but also married, living in Utah, and graduated with an MBA among other things. At the beginning of 2015, I actually didn’t have a plan to leave Los Angeles. I didn’t know I would be living in Tennessee 9 months later or going on a road trip that would forever change my life.
The one thing I’ve learned is a certainty in life is that it is unpredictable. Sometimes – a lot of times – that can be scary. I will always hold onto what my friend Kelsey told me in high school though: If you knew exactly how life would turn out, wouldn’t that be boring?
It’s a nice thing that plans can change. That hard times will pass. That there is room for the unexpected – even if the unexpected can be difficult, or uncomfortable or confusing in the moment.
As far as our next steps? This is our last day in Utah (I still have so much to write about and share with you all about it!) before we head to Los Angeles to spend some time with family. Then, we’re on our way to our permanent location, Indiana (again with the unexpected – not somewhere I ever considered living, but I am so happy to go back after being there last summer with my internship) and starting full-time work in a marketing role there. We’re now on “Plan M” for how we thought things would go, but they’re still going. I’m looking forward to this next chapter of our life.
If you’ve been here before, you may notice I have a real logo now – hopefully you feel it’s a bit better organized than it was. I even updated the about section and decided to add a “subscribe” button (at the bottom of the page)! This feels like a big step. If you’ve never been here before, welcome! Feel free to peruse the complete collection of posts on the new archive page.
Ultimately, I decided this blog was worth keeping around. Not just for my own benefit of recording and remembering, but hopefully for yours as well, whether that’s to use the travel guides (in the process of updating and adding more of these!) for your future trips, or to see wherever you are a little differently and be a tourist in your town, or to inspire your own personal adventures.
Love,
Maddily
