Hi, hello, my name is Alison. I feel like I should introduce myself but I’m not sure what to say. I’m 23, I’m a Scorpio (meaning I will ruin my own life and probably yours, too), and I have a lot of identities in this season of life. I am a grad student trying to survive, a young professional learning how to navigate the working world, and now I guess I’m a blogger.
Cassie and I have been wanting to start a blog for quite some time. We always talked about it and it was always theoretical. We couldn’t come up with snappy names, we couldn’t find time to do it, whatever. The final product came together in our classic manner: messy. 99 days was not a title that we had picked out forever. In fact, it was a name that came to light less than 24 hours before we published our website. Our goal for this blog is to create real, raw content, and we feel the name follows suit. It came about in a real, raw moment that I hope I never forget.
It started out with me. I was feeling a little emotional because at this very moment, I’m kind of wearing thin. I’m finishing up my first year of grad school (insert every party emoji here!!!) and finals are killing me. Anyway, I took a break and I decided to make a video journal entry. Now, this is not something I regularly do. I started a while back as an alternative to writing. I love writing. I’m not as particularly gifted in writing as Cassie (omg, I can’t wait until y’all read some of her stuff), but I find it helpful and often cathartic. Sometimes, I find it difficult to be patient enough for writing. I can only write so fast, and my almost-constant state of chronic anxiety produces too many thoughts too quickly. That being said, a dear friend of mine suggested that I try out an app to make video journal entries. At first, it felt really silly just talking to myself on camera, but I went with it. It was easier than writing sometimes and it helped, so it stuck. I don’t ever watch the videos back; I don’t really want to. For the most part, once it’s out of my system I’m okay and I resume my normally-scheduled events of watching trash TV and avoiding all my responsibilities. That is, until last night. I rewatched a video that I had previously recorded. It just so happened to have been recorded 99 days ago.
In this video, I was a mess. I could tell by the way I looked that I was under a tremendous amount of stress and I was not in a good place. If I couldn’t already tell by my appearance, I then went on to hear myself talk about how difficult it was to be alive in that moment. I was struggling with school, work, and balancing everything out. I cried on camera to an audience that didn’t exist, and I expressed that I didn’t know if any of this was worth it. Past-me was “on the brink,” as Cassie and I like to say. It was a gut-wrenching, enlightening moment.
At this point, present-me is also crying, but for a very different reason. Things. Have. Changed. I went through some monumental, life-altering things this semester (more on that later), and I feel like a different human being. I find joy in things I have never noticed before and I am excited to be alive. I value every piece of knowledge I gain in grad school, I feel thankful to wake up and go to a job in which I have found meaning and purpose. I am not the same as I was 99 days ago, and for that I am so, so grateful. When I think about how I felt the last 99 days, I didn’t really feel like anything was changing on a day-to-day basis. However, when I look back, I realize just how monumentally my life was improving during that whole period. I cried because I was thankful and I cried because I was happy. Side note: this is a new occurrence for me and now I do it like once a day? If I’m anything over medium-happy, I can assure you I will be crying. Anyway, I ended up telling Cassie about it and I decided something big. Life is really hard. Really, horribly, hard. But, as cheesy as it sounds, I have decided it’s worth it. Thus, the name 99 days was born. It really means a lot to me, and I hope you understand why.
So, if you made it this far, thank you for having a little faith that it would be mildly interesting. Maybe you’re just nosy and want to check out the brand-new blog hoping to get some juicy stories. That’s fine, I am the queen of being nosy and no worries, the stories are coming. Regardless, thank you. Cheers to the last 99 days, and on we go to the next.
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