Goodbye Seventeen

Hello people! 

It's currently 9:14 pm and this means that it's only a few hours left to my 18th birthday! 18! I never really thought that I'm going to be 18 so fast. I don't feel any different, both mentally and physically. I feel like I've stop growing mentally since 16 or something. Well, generally I just don't feel like 18. 

(FYI, in Malaysia we don't count your age according to your birthday but rather the year you're born in. So if I tell the others I'm seventeen, they'll assume I was born on 1998 instead of 1997. And also, they'll think that I'm pretending that I'm a year younger. Well, well.)

Birthdays are not a huge deal in my family, but we always celebrated it together as a family. For the record, this is the first birthday I don't get to celebrate with my family.  Sure, we did pre-celebration, but that's not the same. I don't get to be with them on my actual birthday, and that's making me a little bit sad and nostalgic. I'm not going to post up any birthday celebrations photos on this post, because I'm saving it for the next blog post on my birthday, yay! Be ready for tons of food (hopefully) photos! Not to mention, cakes!

Anyway, the main reason I'm writing this post is to kinda reflect on the seventeenth year of my life. Last year was both exciting and wild. I had my ATCL piano recital, which was terrifying and my SPM examinations, which indicated an end to my secondary school life. There's a lot of great things happened too, like how I won a prize in a nationwide Chinese Creative Writing competition, which was totally out of my expectation and how I actually got great results for both my piano recital and my SPM examinations. 

Being seventeen for me was terrifying, as I learnt the fact that I was going to leave home and thinking that I'd never survive in another city, in an unfamiliar environment. The seventeen-year-old me was always busying doing college applications, applying for scholarships, attending educational fairs, said that she's going to study very hard but in the end fell asleep watching Criminal Minds. She was reckless, brave and scared both at the same time. Afraid of making the wrong decisions, terrified of dreaming dreams that might never come true. She was brave too, finally trying out YouTube after fantasizing it for so long, and wouldn't back down when people actually disliked her videos. She insisted on her own point of views and tried not to care what other people had to think of her.

I think I'll really miss being seventeen, where I was under the protection of home, in my comfort zone and forever in secondary school with my friends and family by my side 24/7. I hated the idea of growing up and facing new things, and be even braver to overcome new obstacles. But really, I think everything turned out quite fine in the end, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I did got used to college and living away from my family. That makes me cherish my family even more, and the time I spend with them and my bunch of crazy friends. I miss them so much. 

I can't stay forever 17, no matter how much I wanted to stay 17, but really, I'm somehow glad that I grew up and had to move out of my comfort zone. I learnt a lot, and gained a lot of new experience. It makes me cherish everything I took for granted before, and make me look at things with a new light. I once thought that I won't survive, like literally, I won't, but I did, amazingly. Should I be proud of myself? I guess I should, haha. Even though it's the thing or phase everyone needs to get through, it doesn't mean that it's any easier. 

So... this is an end to my seventeenth year, and into a new journey. I still can't believe I'm going to be 18. I closed my eyes and let my mind ran wild and I feel nothing like 18. What does 18 feels like? I don't know. I feel like I'm still the same. Maybe a little older, a little wiser, a little crazier. Other than that, I'm still the same me. 

I'm kinda excited and terrified for tomorrow to come. I'm actually planning to do a birthday vlog so I get to keep all the memories afterwards. Also, a lot of people who are close to me aren't able to spend my birthday with me, so I think it's kinda good for them to get a view of what I'm doing that day. Sure, I'll still be writing a blog post on it, but I don't think it'll be the same, since one is in word form whereas the other is in video form. And I used to watch a lot of vlogs by youtubers and they all seemed so fun, so I figured maybe I can do one on my birthday. The thing is, I'm kinda shy to do videos around people. Also, I only have my phone to film, so it's kinda hard too. I feel weird, but I want to do it. It's like a totally new experience for me, and you know what they say #YOLO. I know there won't be a lot of people watching it, but what I really care is about who are the ones watching it. If the one I care about and the one who cares about me watch my videos and blog posts, it's already enough for me. Like what they say (again), quality > quantity.

Oh can I just say a little something out of the topic? No offense if you're reading this (and you identify who I'm writing is actually you, I know you meant no harm and were just joking). Today in class, my friend kinda make fun of me saying that my likes on my instagram photos were so little whereas she got a lot. I know she's not boasting, she just enjoys making fun of me (in a good way, not like bitching or something). The thing is, I used to care about that and will take offense when people compared stuffs like that. But I realized when I grow older, this kind of stuffs doesn't really matter. I mean, yes, probably you got a lot of likes, and I got only a little, but I know the one who matters to me notices my post or photo or status and likes it and give me comments and for me, it's all that's really matters. Yes, of course I'll feel a little bit discouraged if my videos don't get a lot of views, but that doesn't matter, because I'm doing what I really like and should I be caring about how other people think of this? Maybe yes and maybe not, this is very subjective.

Which is why I wanna try doing vlogs, because even if it only gets like 10 views or something, I know that that 10 views are the people who are really interested and care for me and my life. Well, and because I'd really love to do a vlog. Let's just see how. If the vlog ended up too bad, I'll just share it among my closest friends and family (probably, but it's kinda embarrassing for me to show my videos to my family.. it's just weird. And also, we don't have the habit of making home movies, or even constantly take pictures, so it's kinda weird for me to develop such interests in making videos. But hey, you'd want to try it out after watching so many videos on YouTube! Curiosity always got the best and the worst of me, haha!) but if it turns out to be decent enough, I'll put it on YouTube, and run the risk that other people (or some so-called friends) will judge me.

It's time to do some conclusion but I really don't know what to say. Just that... goodbye seventeen. I'll miss you terribly and I promise to be better. Or I'll try very hard not to be worse, haha. I'll definitely look back at 17 with a big smile on my face. 

Farewell, farewell.

Till next time people.

xx