Thoughts: On Turning 25 (LOTS of photos)

I've got 24 more minutes left on the clock before I'm legally 25 years old. As a very nostalgic person, I've of course spent the past few weeks going back and forth about this birthday. To me, the number is so big. I had so much I thought I would have accomplished by this birthday. When you're a teenager you think that your twenties are so far away. I've found old conversations between friends through letters, messages, and e-mails where we talk about where we would be around this age. I know I thought I'd be married, have a job, and know where my life was going. With 20 minutes till 25, I can tell you I have no idea where my life is going.
These years have been full of ups and downs.
High school was the best and the worst:

 woops how did that get in there

College was basically just my travel phase where I explored the world and realized there were a lot more people than just me. And lots of people had it harder than me, and I was pretty lucky. I learned humility and I learned respect for cultures. I found a passion for languages and traveling, networking and meeting genuine people. I really fell in love with the world, all parts of it. 

I only have three minutes left, and I have to say, I'm sad to see the past 24 years go. I'm so lucky to have lived them. It reminds me of a poem I once read, Lucky Life by Gerald Stern:

Each year I go down to the island I add
one more year to the darkness;
and though I sit up with my dear friends
trying to separate the one year from the other,
this one from the last, that one from the former,
another from another,
after a while they all get lumped together,
the year we walked to Holgate,
the year our shoes got washed away,
the year it rained,
the year my tooth brought misery to us all.
. . .
My dream is I sleep upstairs over the honey locust
and sit on the side porch overlooking the stone culvert
with a whole new set of friends, mostly old and humorless.
Dear waves, what will you do for me this year?
Will you drown out my scream?
Will you let me rise through the fog?
Will you fill me with that old salt feeling?
Will you let me take my long steps in the cold sand?
Will you let me lie on the white bedspread and study
the black clouds with the blue holes in them?
Will you let me see the rusty trees and the old monoplanes one more year?
Will you still let me draw my sacred figures
and move the kites and the birds around with my dark mind?
Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life. Lucky life. 

Lucky life. I'm not going to lie and say it's been a really easy journey. I've dealt with a lot of emotional problems, health problems, personal grief, and just plain drama. I know there will be more of that in the years to come. But...
I'm excited to see what I will do with my future. I hope I can make it better than my past. I hope I can fight apathy and lethargy and make every day count for something and not waste my time. I hope I can keep traveling and documenting my life in a way that spurs my creativity. Thanks if you're reading this. Happy earthday, happy birthday, happy un birthday. I hope everyone is happy today.