I'm no stranger to people getting close to me because they want something. This isn't a "I'm so successful in my career, everyone wants to be me" blog post, nor do I think that at all. But I get it -- if you have the ability to talk with someone who has a career path you're interested in pursuing, then you'd want to pick their brain, ask for opportunities, etc.

But the one thing that really pisses me off is when people try to take advantage of that.

When I got my first paycheck from Albertsons in college, my mom deposited the check in my account, withdrew a dollar, and framed it. She did this with my sister's first paycheck to, and said it'd be something we would want to look back on someday. "So you remember where you came from," she said.

I made $7.60 an hour pushing grocery carts and cleaning bathrooms. It wasn't glamorous, but I was 18 and I needed a job so I wouldn't have to go to my parents for every single expense: for school supplies or for that extra coffee. We had loans for tuition already, and I wanted to do my part to contribute, and also to start saving up when I could.

I left that job in January 2008. I hadn't been doing well -- personally, academically, mentally. After a series of events and the right people in my life, three years later by the time I was ready to graduate, everything had changed, and it's been changing ever since.

Well. It's been a year. I already blogged about the things I loved this year, now here's the (annual) list of what I've learned...

I'm still working on my annual "year-ender" blog post, but in the meantime, I wrote a list to help me procrastinate on my other list.

Dear 2015,

I don't know what kind of letter this should be. A farewell note? A thank you? A "fuck you"? I'm leaning toward the last one a bit, to be honest, because despite all of the lovely things that did happen this year (a new job, fun travels, checking things off my bucket list), there was a lot of shit that I can't quite shake.

I entered the year recovering from a death, only to experience more of it sprinkled throughout the past 12 months, including additional moments where the reality of death comes closer than you'd like for it to come. In the process of all of the grief, I found myself pulling away from some people and heading toward others. In the heartache of it all, it was easier to drift from people who felt distant than to keep trying to connect because isn't it easier to be the one choosing to lose people than to watch them get taken away so unexpectedly?

No. Perhaps it's just as difficult.