Today is my birthday.
The number keeps going up every year, but somehow I still feel like the same girl who had all those big dreams at 18. A little less reckless maybe. But the same girl.
Over the years there were failures, disappointments, stretches of time when I felt completely lost and couldn’t see a way forward. There were moments when I genuinely thought I’d stay stuck where I was.
But I found my way back. And somehow, without fully planning it, I started building a life that the old me would never have imagined.
This year, I did a lot of things I didn’t expect to do.
I started taking AI seriously — not just as a tool that answers questions, but as something I actually work with. It became a writing partner, a thinking partner, and in some ways, a business partner. It helped me organize ideas, build projects, and turn things that only existed in my head into something real.
I also started paying attention to crypto. I came in as a complete beginner who barely understood anything, and honestly I’m still far from an expert. But I follow what’s happening now. I read things I would have scrolled past before. Bitcoin, blockchain, stablecoins, regulations — there’s still so much I don’t know. But I’ve learned to enjoy not knowing yet.
And this year, I built two websites of my own.
The first is LaceMoods. The second is FlowanRiver.
FlowanRiver feels different somehow. More personal.
A year ago, if someone told me I’d spend my weekends learning GitHub, Hugo, domains, and deployment — debugging errors at midnight, fixing one thing only to break three others — I would have laughed. I’m not a developer. I’ve never been technical. Building a website felt like something other people did.
But with help from AI, I just… started. One small problem at a time.
It wasn’t always fun. Sometimes it was genuinely frustrating.
But when FlowanRiver finally went online, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Like maybe a lot of things aren’t impossible. Maybe we just haven’t started yet.
Not every day this year was good.
I worried about money. I worried about the future. I questioned my decisions more times than I can count. Some days I looked at other people and felt like they were moving so much faster, building so much more, and I was just standing still.
But when I stop and actually look back — not compare, just look — I’ve come further than I realize.
The website I couldn’t build last year now exists. The tools that confused me are part of my daily work now. People I didn’t know a year ago have become clients, collaborators, and friends.
Most changes don’t announce themselves. They hide inside ordinary days. Inside emails nobody sees. Inside late nights that don’t make it onto anyone’s highlight reel. Inside small decisions that feel insignificant at the time.
Growth is usually much quieter than we imagine.
One of the biggest things this year gave me is a new sense of what’s possible.
AI showed me that ordinary people can build things that used to feel out of reach. Crypto made me think differently about money, value, and what the internet might become.
I don’t know exactly where any of this is going. I don’t know what I’ll be working on a year from now, or what I’ll suddenly decide to try next. Maybe something I can’t even picture yet.
But I think I’ll keep following the curiosity. Keep learning. Keep trying things that seem a little crazy but feel right anyway.
That’s probably just who I am.
Someone who keeps listening to her own instincts. Someone who stays curious about the world. A Gemini girl who still believes there’s always something interesting waiting around the corner.
Happy Birthday, Elaine.
May I keep the courage I had at 18.
And may the curiosity never grow old. 🌿