If you spend any time on the Internet recently, you know how everyone feels about 2016. 

2016 wasn't our best year, collectively. 

We had to bury Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher, Harper Lee, Muhammad Ali, Prince, David Bowie, Alan Thicke, Debbie Reynolds, Harambe and more. We had to watch as 2016 claimed countless Hollywood couples, from Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to Lady Gaga and Taylor Kinney.

Taking a step in the more personal direction, 2016 was basically this emoticon for me. 

On one hand, I had an absolutely incredible year. I started the year off with a spur-of-the-moment trip to Iceland, partied for four days at Firefly, checked off the only item on my bucket list and did a fly-over of the Grand Canyon, drank my way through Asheville, celebrated my Grandad's 88th birthday, cheered on a few friends as they wed their husbands, raised over $11,000 for Massey Cancer Center through our first ever Richmond Brunch Weekend, watched my brother graduate and bought a house. 

But on the other hand, my Grandad died right before Christmas, I found myself struggling with being a transplant, worrying that I'm settling, taking for granted a lot of really cool opportunities, fretting over my weight and I've had to consciously try to be happy. 

I had to burn a half day of PTO recently, and my old roommate and I decided to re-create the half-days of our hay-day, when I used to have half day Fridays pretty consistently. We'd go grab some food, drink for hours, laugh, make new friends and eventually find ourselves singing karaoke.

When I got out of work, I went directly over to her house, and we realized we didn't want to go to our old bars anymore (red flag number one), so we headed to a local diner near some breweries. When my mom called about a rush trip up to Annapolis, she was nervous she was ruining my half-day. At that point, we were on our second drink, and already sad with how the day was turning out.

We used to find so much joy in the simplicity. Like one day we taped 40's to our hands to drink them just because. We sat out on the porch, not saying much, but having a ball. We used to have a saying, which was,

"If I could be obsessed with one thing, it would be our lives." 

I was broke AF, my job was garbage and I was chubby/fat. But I was elated. Life just seemed easy. Or if not easy -- it was at least an adventure. 

I miss that. Everything was new. Everything was fun. Even when things were hard, they just felt like changes happening. Now, I get misty-eyed when songs come on that remind me of earlier days and I'm making big decisions and dealing with real-world problems.

I'm not here to entirely shit on 2016. There were some really awesome times, I grew a whole lot as a person and as an adult, but I can't get over the desire to turn back time sometimes and just enjoy everything more. 2016 had a lot of redeeming qualities, but it's kind of like when you were little and playing in the waves. When they were big, they were really fun, but you knew they'd eventually knock you down.

And that's how I'd sum up 2016.