My friend Nina Sabak — who is a glorious writer, go check out her stuff — mentioned that she was doing 10Q again this year. I had never heard of it, but she recommended checking it out. As she said, “I’m a sucker for self-reflection,” to which I say SIGN ME THE HELL UP.

Here’s a description from the 10Q website, if you’ve never heard of it:

10 Days. 10 Questions.

Answer one question per day in your own secret online 10Q space. Make your answers serious. Silly. Salacious. However you like. It’s your 10Q. When you’re finished, hit the magic button and your answers get sent to the secure online 10Q vault for safekeeping. One year later, the vault will open and your answers will land back in your email inbox for private reflection. Want to keep them secret? Perfect. Want to share them, either anonymously or with attribution, with the wider 10Q community? You can do that too.

Next year the whole process begins again. And the year after that, and the year after that. Do you 10Q? You should.

I won’t lie, I haven’t exactly made time to answer these each and every day as they roll into my inbox, but I am working on catching up. I’m posting them here for posterity, though I will follow the spirit of Q10 and not read them again until next year.

Question 1: Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

I came into myself. I’m 28 years old, and it has only been in the past year that I truly developed into an individual. Since I was fifteen, I have always been half of a whole. During the brief time periods where I wasn’t in a relationship, I fell into a deep depression and engaged in risky behaviors to fill the empty void inside me, until I found another relationship to throw myself into.

This past year, I’ve come into my own. I identified what MY interests are, what I like to do, what I want to do — and what I DON’T want to do. I travel, I earned my yoga teacher certification, I earned my PHR certification, I have been an awesome dog and cat mom, I have done things that scared me, I have done things that have exhilarated me. I have learned to be alone without being lonely, to feel as though I fill up space, and that space matters.

That doesn’t mean I always feel comfortable and secure. There are always moments of doubt, shadows of insecurity. But what I have learned over the last year is — that’s life. It goes up, it goes down, but most importantly, it goes on. When it is horrible, I know that is will not be horrible forever, and that is what keeps me moving forward, whereas before I would be stuck in a holding pattern, scared to try anything for fear of making it worse. But now, I am no longer afraid, even when I feel scared temporarily — because I know it will pass.

Nothing is better than feeling whole. And you really just can’t beat that with a stick.