2016.

I seriously cannot believe 2016 is coming to a grand finale. My heart & mind & spirit have experienced so much joy, confusion, growth, pain, & love towards other humans this year. This was the year of growing up. I'm not sure why God decided to place so many life-altering circumstances & people in my path as a 16 year old, but all I know is that the outcome of many integral challenges & humbling experiences changed me for the better & I just thought I'd share some of them.

As always, none of this is scientifically proven or 100% guaranteed to be the keys to the universe's deepest questions. Please don't take my advice to heart & somehow make it wrongly applicable & then have your life ruined (not that any of this is super wild or irresponsible, I'm just creating some sort of disclaimer lol). Also, I seriously don't know everything. I never want to come across as incredibly wise & that I've got everything figured out because A) I still can't do liquid eyeliner B) have near death experiences every time I attempt to drive anywhere outside my neighborhood C) still get into all kind of dumb & thoughtless trouble daily. So, please understand that it's all my opinion & that I don't know the answers to all of life's many questions.

And nowwww I'm cringing because I made this introduction painfully & ridiculously long. I should just skip to the dramatic pearls of wisdom part.

What I've Learned

1. As my girl Amy Poehler/Leslie Knope says, "Hoes before Bros. Uteruses before Deuderuses. Ovaries before Brovaries." In all seriousness, this has become so obviously essential to me this past year. Best friends are fiercely loyal, always honest, let you be yourself, & can offer you so much more than a temporary boy can. Not that I'm anti-boy or anything like that, but putting your best friends first is honestly one of the best decisions I've ever made. Put your best friends first DESPITE the situation and despite your current feelings.

2. You can't change people, but you can love them. God is working on everyone's masterpiece in his own time & with his own vision. It isn't our responsibility to try and change who people are, that's Heavenly Father's job. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes that we simply will never understand. But we can always love people, and there will never be a negative consequence from kindness. It's one of the few thing's that's guaranteed in this life; loving people selflessly, consistently, & genuinely never ever fails.

3. If you keep waiting until you're ready, you never will be. I'm not a risk taker- I never have been & it's so unlike me to be insanely spontaneous & do something that isn't 100% stable & sure. But I've recently been trying to retrain my brain to just go for it. You only have so much time as a teenager, & if you keep waiting until you're ready for an opportunity, it WILL pass you by.

4. Listen to people like you care. In our generation, I generally see so many people living in their own little self-absorbed bubble (myself included, I've definitely been guilty of this.) I made a new friend this year who always, without fail, asks me how I am and means it. She listens to everything I have to say with the realest & strangest degree of interest, & even though it's a small gesture, it means everything to me. I always try to remember small details about people & ask then how they are with real interest. This has made so much difference in my conversations with other people. If you listen to people like you care, eventually, you will care.

5. Document everything. Write every trivial detail of your life down. Take pictures on special occasions & everyday occasions. Journal religiously. Maybe I sound melodramatic & paranoid, but I always make sure to obnoxiously take as many pictures as possible & write everything that happens to me (the good, the bad, & the ugly). The person I learn the most from is the person I used to be, the person who I wrote about a couple of years ago & it's so evident in my writing (*cringes*).

6. Let go of people who half love you. You deserve the best. I don't care who you are & the amounts of mistakes that you've made, you deserve to be surrounded by people who genuinely love you. I personally have a bad habit of clinging onto toxic people, but this year I've realized that breakups should not be reserved for only boyfriends. Breakup with friends who only half love you. Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly, it's your story after all so don't include subpar characters.

7. Music is everything. Music has been my savior. I find that there's a song for all of my life's highs and lows & it can seriously be an unreal source of good. It's therapeutic. I've relied so much on music this past year (to see my favorite songs from this year, scroll down to the bottom. warning: one direction may/may not be on that list...)

8. Don't let social media manipulate your emotions. I made the *shocking* choice to quit Instagram for five months in December, & I can't even explain to you the difference it's made in my life. I miss seeing what my friends are up to & I miss the high that social media guarantees, but honestly? I feel cleansed without it. It's worthless. I don't even remember half of the stuff I see on there yet I burn up an embarrassing amount of time on the app. It isn't worth sacrificing real interaction with real people, I promise.

9. Everything comes full circle. I could write a novel solely based on this one revelation; everything comes full circle. So many things will happen in your life that will inevitably rip your heart out, & maybe you just won't understand why. Maybe you were doing everything right, or maybe you'd made so many mistakes that you just stopped keeping track but either way, you will find out that there's a reason for EVERYTHING. & there's beauty in everything. I would not live if I didn't firmly believe that there's beauty in every outcome, situation, and person.

10. Compliment obsessively. You honestly will never see the full extent of the good you inflict on others. I make it my goal to compliment 5 different people every single day. Whether they be that cute stranger who held the door for you, or your grandmother or that girl you've always despised. Compliment obsessively, the world doesn't have enough kind people.

11. Love yourself first. This has been the hardest thing for me to grasp, & it's definitely still a work in progress. Before you let anyone in, you have to learn to love yourself first. I read a quote once (what? me? reading quotes? I know, so out of character;) that said "There's so much more to life than being bitter over a boy who doesn't want you, or being elated about one who does want you. Boys might seem like the entire universe right now, but there's so much more to life than boys. You need to know & love yourself before you try to love somebody else." Word.

These are my favorite songs from the past year. Some of them are directly connected to a memory or experience, so that is why they take my breath away, but others are just beautiful because they're beautiful.

tenerife sea // ed sheeran (I WOULD MARRY THIS SONG IN A HEARTBEAT, if it were legal. President, Trump, legalize marrying songs maybe?)

youth // daughter

cardiac arrest // bad suns. ;)

from eden // hozier

water under the bridge // adele

remedy // adele

in the beat of a heart // erick baker

the last time// erick baker

sandcastles // beyonce

if i could fly // one direction (i'm sorry, i couldn't NOT include them)

take it all back // judah & the lion

balance // future islands

seeing stars // borns

& finally, to wrap up my 2016 post, I have chosen my favorite 16 pictures from 2016.

& then, this irrationally long post will come to a conclusion.

*not in any particular order.

home is wherever I'm with you.

me & The One, The Only, Autumn Bree Miller before she moved to Utah. (

2 of the best people Earth has to offer, folks. this was also one of the best nights of my life.

the only boy I'll ever need >> Jk, but my sweet cousin surpasses them all. ;) i love you gavin.

A casual picture of The Cutest Dog To Ever Grace The Planet. Coco Bella is the crowning jewel of my family.

THIS. NIGHT. february formal omg...

My favorite person on the earth performing a dance that I choreographed at my favorite theatre in the world? Indescribable. & to see the amount of success this solo gained, and the multiple times it was performed at charity events? this was definitely one of the best moments of my career thus far. i love you henley.

EVENING OF DANCE 2016. the most enchanting week of the year.

We both look disgusting but that's all part of The Camp Glow. Unreal experiences with my best friends who don't judge me when I dance on the tables at 4:00 a.m. and throw stuff at them. Priceless week.

How could I ever leave out EFY? So much love.

audrey ruth morgenegg, my saving grace.

nashville tn temple with caris aileen morgenegg. we will never stop being friends because she literally knows everything about me, it's actually frightening how well we know each other.