Patiently Persevering: Things I Am Learning

The first week of 2024 is over, and honestly, it feels a little surreal. There’s so much that I want from this year. I have so many hopes, dreams, and prayers that are waiting to be answered in 2024.

It’s been more than five months since I last saw my parents, and while I think I have learned to accept that maybe this is how it has to be for another year or so, I can feel how much they miss me even across the sea.

But I don’t want to go back home until I have some good news to share with them. I want to complete my master’s, get a job that pays well enough for me to start paying back my student loans, and then I want to return home and show them all that I have done.

It’s a little silly, but when you have parents who keep sacrificing selflessly just so you could have a better future, and a chance at a better life…in a strange way, that love becomes difficult to bear. It feels a little like a burden–like a loan you need to pay back in little installments.

So I am patiently persevering. I keep pushing forward, and it has taught me so much over the years.

Like last year, when I forced myself to write a little every day and actually ended up completing NaNoWriMo for the first time. My whole I have struggled to make it past the first three or four chapters. But last November, I wrote 50,000 words of my work in progress.

I realized for the first time that the only thing that has ever held me back from getting that much closer to my dreams was my own fear of never being good enough.

All of that ends in 2024. This is the year that I hope we will all learn to be a little kinder to ourselves. This is the year that I hope we will all have a little more faith in ourselves.