Monday July 31, 2023. 12:00am.
Project [r], chapter 27: day one. A year-long journey of becoming.
Today I begin a year of radical change. This project has already created shifts beneath the surface — and I am ready to make waves from the ripple.
It’s my 27th birthday. And these are hard words for me to type. I never imagined I’d be here, turning 27 after another year spent in the midst of a colossal storm, trying to readjust to life after a few wildly unexpected turns. The last few months of my 26th year have been an unravelling of embedded darkness within the layers of the life I built around me. And I am only just beginning to see the light. I have finally arrived above the surface of the ashes, but it has been the hardest fight of my entire life.
There’s an overarching madness you fall into as you near another lap around the sun. As you tick off another chapter, another mark of the years that are flying by. And this year, like most, I am falling into it head first. There is beauty in celebrating your life, but there is also sometimes pain. And this year the pain is tugging on my heart, mourning the loss of the years that have passed and what they could have been. But this is where I’m cutting the ties. With a relentless determination I am hightailing it out of the endless cycle of stagnation my life has become. In an attempt to completely transform my life, I’m giving myself one year to fall back in love with it. One year to pour myself into my passions. To create the fire that’s been burning inside of me. To get completely lost in the art of creativity and adventure, the magic of my dreams, and the unknown of my own potential.
For my 27th birthday, I am gifting myself the greatest gift of all — the chance to start again. I am gifting myself a clean slate. A blank canvas on which to paint the colours of my life.
This is Project R – Chapter 27.
I started project R as a personal project three months ago in my attempt to get back into the world again, to find my life again. Most of this, I haven’t shared with the world yet. As the project went on, time sped by and I have only just begun to put the pieces of myself back together so I can open up again. A lot has changed since then. But it was a big part of the journey.
Now, project R has become something more. It has become something more than just an attempt, but a glimpse into the life I could create for myself. It has become a promise, to myself, to my future self, and to all of the lives, I will one day live.
It’s been messy.
And raw.
To say the least.
But I’m finally starting to feel alive.
When I began planting the seeds for this project, I was in a very dark place. I was just starting to come out of a war I had been waging in my mind every single day for over a year. I was so tired of feeling the way I was feeling. I was walking so close to the edge of a life that was crumbling around me. But there is hope in hitting the bottom. There’s only one way to go — up.
I’ve written a lot of words over the past 12 months in the despair of that struggle. When I began writing, I was navigating the darkest depths of my mind. I was losing my balance on the edge. But these words led me here, and for that, I will always be grateful. This chapter is an ode to that journey that led to my rescue. A lifeboat for saving myself. A collection of the moments in which I am changing my life. Starting with a single decision every day for one year.
I’ve spent a long time feeling trapped in a life I never wanted to live. Stuck in a motionless existence beneath a world that continued to move, these past few years have been the most difficult of my entire life.
I was living a life held together by a broken thread
It was messy
And raw
And it was dark
But our existence is composed of duality itself
Light and dark
You need one to feel the other
Through illness I became a shell of who I used to be, a shadow hiding behind the colours of life. I spent most of these years feeling like someone had pressed a giant pause button on my life. I had drifted into stillness and I became angry with the world. But in my anger, I lost my fight. Because when the time came for me to press play again, I’d already given up. The weight of my life and what it would become became a burden too heavy for me to carry. So I closed my eyes. I withdrew from the world, and from myself. While life continued to move on, I was frozen in time. And somewhere along the way, I let go. I was no longer the girl I used to be, and I wasn’t the person I wanted to be, either. My illness had taken more from me than I ever thought I could get back in life. And I no longer knew how I was supposed to live with that.
The muse for this project could be taken back to the beginning — the place where it all began five years ago when my health began to crumble. But that would take a longer detour. And it wouldn’t be entirely true. While it has shaped the destination of my life, I can’t help but feel that there have been missed chances over the years to pick up the torch and hold up the fight. Yet I feel like this is only the beginning.
The real muse that ignited this journey started twelve months ago in a restless attempt to find a purpose in the chaos of my life. I did not plan on being where I am now as I turn the corner into my 27th year. In fact, I would have sworn to you that it wasn’t even a possibility. Twelve months ago I had every expectation that my life would have started picking up speed again and getting back on track after a third round of battling my health. Yet I find myself in a similar state of stagnation after a brutally unsuccessful year of 26. I won the fight for my health this year, but I didn’t win the fight for my life.
For most of these months, I wanted to run away. I wanted to change my name and find a new life in a small town somewhere deep in the middle of nowhere. I thought if I escaped the walls of my life that were closing me in, I could start fresh on a blank canvas. At least this is what I told myself over and over as if it was my only solution. But the truth was that the very thing I was running from is the very thing that would follow. It was me. I can’t remember how many days it’s been since I was last truly happy. But I can tell you it’s been five years since I stopped trying to be. 1825 days of being so focused on my medical health, recovering from surgeries, and just trying to exist that I forgot how to truly live. I was focused on surviving. And I lost a huge part of myself along the way. I could never have imagined feeling so lost at 27. That I could have felt this way for five years. I remember a time when I was hopelessly in love with life, the type of kid that was always singing and dancing through the rain, chasing sunshine on cloudy days. I always had dreams bigger than life, and I never questioned if I would get there. You would never hear the words of doubt slip out of my mouth, because to succumb to doubt, would be to succumb to the possibility of something not working out. And this was never a possibility for me. I would always find a way to get wherever it was I wanted to go — no questions, no doubt, no fear.
And one day it all changed. Suddenly life took a turn and I wasn’t able to bounce back with the certainty that had always carried me forward. Life was no longer guaranteed and suddenly doubt flooded my entire being and it never really left. And this year, more than ever, I let doubt run my life. I was afraid. And I shrank into the shadows while life carried on around me. I began this year hoping for a second chance, and instead, it became a mountain too big to move. Instead, I was pulled back into the swells of illness and forced back onto the sidelines of life. And this caused my foundations to crumble. I once again lost my will to hold up the torch for battle. I spent the bigger part of this year struggling more than I have any other year. And I am in the process of trying to recover and heal from it, to forgive the parts of me that gave up. I was in a dark place, and it has taken me a long time to start crawling toward the light. It’s hard to lay bare the details of an internal battle that wasn’t won. I retreated from everything I knew and I am only just starting to come back from that. To be stagnant in the midst of chaos is a hollow place to be. And I think I will always carry the weight of that loss, the holes that it opened up.
But with the dark, finally came the light. And I started to realise the purpose in pain. That is isn’t your pain that defines you, it’s how you rise from it. And this is my rise. I’m ready to fight like hell. Not just to survive, which I have been doing for so long. But to finally live.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully understand what was happening in my mind through this time. But one thing I am sure of is that looking back, I am so thankful I’m still here. And I am relentlessly determined to rebuild my life and take back control of who I am. It’s hard to look back at a shell of your life that has lost so much under a cloud of time, which is why I’ve made this promise. A desperate plea to my 28-year-old self that we won’t end up here again. That we’ll look back on this year and we won’t be blinded by regret or loss. We won’t see our days blanketed in darkness and find that we gave up. We’ll know that we did everything we possibly could to feel happy again. We’ll know that we put up a fight.
In this chapter, I’m finding the things that make me happy again. I’m making one decision, every single day, that sends a ripple of change through my whole life. I’m promising to find joy in the things I’ve taken for granted this year. The golden glow of the sunrise as the world wakes up. The taste of fresh air on my lungs. Warm hugs. Big stretches in the morning. Dancing barefoot around the house. Driving with all the windows down. The first cup of coffee in the morning. The ocean air. I’m taking the time to look around at the world I was so eager to hide from. I’ve learnt so much about myself in the past three months of this journey already. And I know there will be days I may fall again, but I know that I’ll always find the strength to get back up. And never again will I give up on myself. And this year I will prove that. One year from now, I’ll look back without feeling like time has slipped out of my reach. And I’ll know that I did everything possible to fall back in love with life again.
I’m going to pour my heart and soul into doing something for myself every day over the next year and create a capsule, here in this collection. I’m going to learn, take risks, face my fears, and open myself up to the world in front of me.
I’m giving myself one year. And it starts today — July 31st, 2023, to completely reinvent myself.
So for the next 365 days, I’ve set myself a few new rules:
1. Commit to change every day
2. Pour 100% effort into absolutely everything you do
3. Only compare yourself to who you were yesterday
4. Pursue purpose
5. Build trust in yourself through radical self-responsibility
6. Keep your promises
7. Set the tone of each day with conscious intentions
8. Whatever you do, step forward
9. Value your time
10. Prioritise adventure
11. Practice movement every day
12. Notice your thoughts
13. Challenge yourself as much as possible outside your comfort zone
14. Prioritise proper nutrition
15. Focus on the lessons, not the hurt
16. Spend more time outside than inside
17. Say yes to more things
18. Expand the limits of your health
19. Do the thing that scares you the most
The biggest rule: one simple act of change every day.
I don’t have a plan or map of the way that I’m going to change my life, I just know that I have to. And this is my attempt. It’s going to be messy, change always is. But mess is good. It’s colourful, it teaches you about yourself. You learn to discover what you like, what you don’t, what helps you grow, and what holds you back.
One year to change my life. That’s it. I’m on a mission to discover my next great adventure, starting with one simple decision.
On July 31st, 2024, chapter 27 will be a time capsule for the collection of moments in which I saved my life. A personal reflection on the acts that change everything. I’m creating waves of reinvention, starting with this single moment. Project R will still remain the space for me to share episodes of adventure, chaos, and growth as I navigate this journey. But chapter 27 will contain the personal reflections of my experience through this gateway of change over the next 12 months. In many ways a journal for my 28-year-old self to look back on and see the mountains we move and the heights we scale as we claw our way back to feeling alive. It is a movement, a search for change, and a promise to my future self. A year of wild exploration through a life bursting with a desire to do everything, to feel everything, and to see everything.
And who knows — this might just become a birthday tradition. Because a life of change never stops, it only gets better. And I can’t wait to see the memories we make.
Here’s to growing as we navigate another leap around the sun. To celebrating birthdays, and all that unfolds within them. This year is going to be big, the journey has just begun.
m.a
![Ep.3 Project [r]: The Rise](https://i0.wp.com/riseandseek.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/clemens-van-lay-un1s8VOLRC0-unsplash-2-scaled.jpg?fit=1170%2C780&ssl=1)
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