It’s Friday, folks! Favorite day of the week for nearly everyone who has a 9-5. It’s been a seriously loved-filled week around Boston, and so I bring you all the hearts & starry eyes you can handle! More easily digestible than Valentine’s Day and with warmer weather, too, who could complain!

→ Starting things off, those beautiful flowers to the right. This past Tuesday, March 27th, Piece and I celebrated one year. He had flowers sent to my office and caused the girls to either totally adore him and want to give him hugs or totally loathe him. One threatened to kick him if she saw him! But the love was obvious and the arrangement beautiful and the note perfect. I spent all of Tuesday floating on cloud 9 and then we had a wonderful wine dinner at Legal’s downtown. Really, just getting to the spend the evening with Piece, and knowing what the last year has been and what the next is going to be, was more than I could have asked for. This Sunday it’s my turn and I’m taking him to brunch!

→ This absolutely adorable storyline on QuestionableContent as had me in giggles for weeks now! And Ship’s crush on Hanners is just the right kind of sappy.

→ Also this week, we celebrated my first year in Boston! It’s official, I’m sticking around! Over a year ago, now, I said my goodbyes to the Virginia coast, the warmth and beauty of the South, and hit the road for New England. It’s been a year of ups and downs, adjusting to state politics vs city, new personalities, new friendships and relationships. I’ve been burnt a few times, had to face some hard truths about my own happiness and what I need to make it a reality, as well as consider the sort of people and connections I want in my life. It has been the hardest geographic transition I’ve ever made in my life. But it’s been amazing. I wrote at the beginning of this journey:

I saw myself as eternally jaded and confused and 24. I dated musicians and drank too much and threw what few rules I had lived by out the window. I wore leggings and headbands and chain-smoked menthols in my knock-off Ray Bans.

I’m not that child anymore, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. I feel more settled, more satisfied, more capable, and more excited than I ever have in my life. I wondered, back then, what life might look like post-Limbo, and I think I nailed it. I’m glad to say the things I thought might be in my future are what I get to live everyday now. It’s been a year, but the time can’t be truly measured in it’s impact. So I’ll leave you with this:

It’s about growth. Limbo is an infinite space. It’s shitty deals and hard work and learning lessons you wish you never had to. It’s long roads and longer nights and you feel like nothing can even lift you up out of it or bring you down off your natural high. But as you grow, as Limbo does its job, you might not need it anymore. You might not need to move every couple of months just because you’re feeling claustrophobic and twitchy. You might find you really do believe things you’ve always rebelled against. You might figure out that you’re okay with all of that and that Chick Corea was right and “that truth is basically simple and feels good, clear and right.”