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I remember last News Year’s, writing my first column of 2024 in the guest room of a friend’s house where I was staying for the holiday. Around that time, I was deciding on a new name for the upcoming year’s column series, and I tossed some ideas around with Austin. We landed on “Growing Pains.” Mostly, I think, because there was a lot of foreshadowing that change was upon my life in 2024. 

This year, I went from absolutely hating New Year’s to calling it one of my favorite holidays. I hated it because each new year was a daunting, unknown future before me. I hated how unpromising the next twelve months would be. But looking back on it as I sit in bed and write my last “Growing Pains” column of 2024? I’d say it ended up pretty swell. In fact, I’d call it my best year yet. 

I released my second novel. I wrote a new book. Most importantly, I got engaged to my best friend. And while the year has had too many high points to count, it’s hit a fair share of lows, too––(Don’t even get me started on July.) 

Like I said, I’m sitting in my bed writing my last Growing Pains column, thinking, “Man, did that title prove true.” In January, I’d sat right here and written something up about the sparkling silver necklace and hat that says Happy New Year, which I hung in my bedroom. I remember looking at it, sensing the grandness of the year before me, wondering how the world would look to me then.

It was confusing and powerful and heavy and light. It’s kind of like being in the middle of a novel, where the plot is approaching the climax, and so much has already happened, but so much more is going to happen to get to the happy ending. 

All of autumn, I wondered whether this column would be the last I wrote for our beloved Tryon Daily Bulletin. See, in April, I’m moving to Nashville with my new husband, and I’ve spent my whole life being a local Landrum girl––so local, in fact, that I have my own column in the newspaper. But the move, the change, the future, it all seemed too much to balance with my biweekly column. 

And then, I reread The Great Gatsby, as I seem to do every New Year’s, and I decided that I’d beat on, fingers to the keyboard, writing things from a 20-something’s POV. And I thought, “I’ll have a lot of content. I’ll have a lot of feelings, a lot of things to tell my readers back home. Perhaps, a take on new adventures, a young writer marching around a new city––that’s right, a city, and how it’s so much different than my hometown. I’ll just. . . beat on.” 

So, for the third time, I’ll hold up my glass to a new column and new year, in which timeworn routine is the riptide, and I am the raft. 

Perhaps one might call that “boats against the current.”