Olivia Jordan

Becoming: A Record of Growth

I am starting something that feels both small and enormous at the same time. Small, because it is just a blog, a collection of posts, words on a screen. Enormous, because I am choosing to record the next four years of my life, not just what I do, but what I think and how I feel.

In a few months, I will be a high school freshman. Time moves quickly. Seasons blur together: concerts, competitions, exams, trips, milestones. As the years pass, things will change: the way I listen to music, the way I move across the ice, what I notice when I travel, and how I think about art. I do not want those changes to pass unnoticed.

I am starting this blog because I want to trace my own thinking. I want to look back one day and see not just who I was, but how I grew into someone new. This blog will be a place to follow that path. It is not meant to be a highlight reel. I am not writing to document achievements. I am writing to document the process, the milestones, and the quiet in between moments when something shifts internally.

I do not expect to have perfect conclusions. In fact, I hope I do not. I hope that when I read my early posts years from now, I will see assumptions I have outgrown and questions I have refined. Growth should be visible. Thinking should evolve.

I want to give my future self a record of this time in my life: a record of what mattered to me, what confused me, what inspired me, and how I tried to understand the world around me and my place within it.

Four years from now, I know I will be different. That much is certain. What I do not know is how I will change. Perhaps some of my interests will sharpen, others will expand, and some may quietly fade. The connections I see between disciplines may grow clearer, or I may discover entirely new patterns that reshape the way I think.

This blog is my way of paying attention. On the first and fifteenth of each month, I will pause. I will step back from the rush of school, rehearsals, practices, and plans. I will ask myself what I noticed, what changed, and what questions are still unanswered. And I will write. Not because I have everything figured out, but because I am still becoming. And I want to remember how it felt along the way.