The Last Night: What 2024 Taught Us About Growing Up, Showing Up, and Sometimes Giving Up

I'm sitting here writing this with a half-empty cup of coffee (my second of the day), trying to wrap my head around the fact that we're actually about to say goodbye to 2024. Anyone else feeling like this year simultaneously lasted forever and flew by in about three seconds flat?

You know that feeling when you look back at something that happened in February and your brain goes "Wait, that was THIS year?" Yeah, that's been happening to me a lot lately. Remember when everyone was obsessed with that viral butterboard trend? Was that even this year? Time has become this weird, elastic thing that stretches and snaps in ways that don't quite compute anymore.

Image Credit: @kronemberger

Let's be real – between the highlight reels and the "New Year, New Me" posts that are about to flood our feeds, there were a lot of random Tuesday afternoons where we all just did our best to keep it together. Those moments deserve some recognition too. The days we showed up to work with mismatched socks but still crushed that presentation. The nights we had cereal for dinner because adulting is hard sometimes. The small victories that never made it to Instagram but felt huge in the moment.

If there's one thing 2024 taught us, it's that life has a sense of humor about our plans. Some of us started new jobs, ended relationships, moved cities, or finally adopted that pandemic puppy we'd been thinking about. Others of us stayed exactly where we were but changed in ways we never expected. Both paths are equally valid, equally important.

Can we talk about the real MVPs of 2024? The friend who brought soup when we were sick. The one who listened to us rant about the same problem for the fifteenth time. The group chat that never sleeps. These connections carried us through the year, one gif and voice message at a time.

This year taught me that it's okay to still be figuring things out. I finally learned how to properly fold a fitted sheet (game-changer), but I still can't seem to keep my plants alive. I mastered the art of setting boundaries at work, but my dating life remains an interesting experiment in human behavior. Growth isn't linear, and maybe that's the whole point.

Remember when we all collectively decided that brown and beige interior was going to be a thing? Or when Kendrick and Drake's argument happened and we all couldn't stop talking about it for weeks? Kendrick, you clearly won, and thanks for the awesome music as always!

This year had its share of cultural moments that brought us together, made us think, made us laugh, and occasionally made us question everything.

As we stand here on the edge of 2025, I'm struck by how different everything looks from what I imagined last New Year's Eve. Some dreams came true, others changed shape entirely, and new ones appeared out of nowhere. That's the beauty of it all, isn't it? We can plan and hope and dream, but life has its own way of surprising us.

Tonight, some of us will be at parties, dressed to the nines and ready to welcome 2025 with a bang. Others will be on the couch in their favorite sweatpants, ordering takeout and watching movies. Some will be working night shifts, keeping the world running while others celebrate. Some will be alone by choice, others by circumstance. All of these are perfect ways to cross this yearly threshold.

As the clock ticks down these final hours of 2024, I'm thinking about how we all just lived through another year of history. We showed up, we tried things, we failed at some stuff, we succeeded at others. We loved, we lost, we learned, we grew. We did the best we could with what we had.

So here's to us – the ones who kept going even when it was hard. Who celebrated the tiny victories and weathered the storms. Who helped others when we could and weren't afraid to ask for help when we needed it. Who learned new things about ourselves, even this late in the game.

Here's to the memories we made, the lessons we learned, and the people who made this year what it was. Here's to the dreams we're carrying into 2025 and the ones we're leaving behind in 2024. Here's to another year of trying, failing, succeeding, and growing.

And here's to you, reading this somewhere between the old year and the new. Whatever 2024 was for you, and whatever 2025 might bring, you made it. We made it. And that's worth celebrating, however you choose to do it.

Happy New Year's Eve, friends. See you on the other side.