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Happy Saturday, my dearest readers. There’s a warm breeze on these chilly March days, and it’s got me planning my summer too far in advance. New year, new travels. I’m hoping to hop on a plane and see Boston, New Orleans, Chicago and Vegas in the next 10 months.

Dear Diary: This week, I decorated my office. Pictures are my favorite decoration––I look at them when I’m bored, I value them as much as the moment itself, and I find myself wanting to be back in that same spot when I look for too long. As I was hanging my pictures and framing them to sit on my desk, I reflected on the moment I got to watch the sunset from a little island outside of Tampa, the moment I fought against the bitter December wind at the top of a New York skyscraper, and my favorite moment in front of a special lighthouse on the SC coast.

I was telling a coworker about one of my friends who recently moved to Chicago just for the heck of it, and he responded, “This is a good age for you to travel.”

Me and my 23-year-old self have been to several places, and one of my very closest friends just traveled to Budapest for ten days. My coworker was right––this is the perfect age to “spread your wings,” as they say.

In about a month, I will turn 24 years old. I’ve said a thousand times that I don’t know what lies ahead of me or what 24 will look like. But I do know two things: I want to keep traveling while I’m young, and, more importantly, moving forward isn’t always about the path in front of you. It’s sometimes about channeling the path behind you.

I was sitting in the bathtub the other night (where I do my best thinking and relaxing, even though a lot of people call it “soaking in your own filth”) and I was comparing myself to someone in the healthiest way a person can.

I was comparing my present self to the 12-year-old girl I used to be.

Diary. . .she was the best kiddo you’d ever meet. She ran into the woods and sought to lose her way just to find it again. She read books more quickly than anyone else. She just wanted to be a writer but promised she wouldn’t think too deeply about her future. She wanted to be the colors instead of seeing them, and then she wanted to write them in order to feel them.

Now, I fear I’m not the pine-green adventure book I used to be, and I’ve shifted into sad poetry, in a sense. The kid I knew used to romanticize pain where now if I can get very honest with my readers, she might be only capable of feeling it.

Before I get too cloudy, I just want to say this: buried treasure isn’t ever a new fortune. Buried treasure has been there for years and just needs to be dug up and dusted off.

Dearest readers, instead of running all over the world trying to find yourself, turn around and follow your tracks to your 12-year-old spirit. Dig it up. Dust it off. It’s been there the whole time. Someone just had to find it. The glitter you’ll find will be golden.