remembering the best stuff

So I'm doing this "Almost 30" project (see previous post) and one of my challenges was this:  C. told me to write the 10 things I'm most proud of/ the best things about my twenties. And J. asked me to write down the things I am blessed to have or have achieved until now, and then frame it and read it every day... Both mentioned it was to "get positive" (apparently, they are trying to tell me something...). Anyway, I merged the two challenges and this is the list I came up with.

1. Publishing a book I wrote when I was 13 and selling 5-thousand copies to the full profit of the Children Cancer Center. I wrote "I Believe in Angels", a novel about friendship between a boy and a girl, cancer, teen-pregnancy, and a whole lot of other themes you would never expect a 13 year old girl to write about... In 2006, it was published and sold in bookstores all over Lebanon. Thousands of people got to read me --every writer's dream.
2. Getting a Fulbright Scholarship... I was never one of those bright straight A students with amazing grades... I was always average, had ok grades, nothing to write home about. But I knew how to write, and I nailed those essays in my application. Went straight to their emotions, and it worked. I got a full scholarship to a university in the US for my Masters Degree; my first fully independent achievement. Got it all on my own, none of that nepotism BS we're all used to in Lebanon.
3. Going to the Journalism School at Columbia University... An Ivy League school, and one of the best journalism schools in the world --created by Pulitzer himself...  and I met some amazing people including one of my best-friends.
4. Living in New York City... Growing up, all I ever wanted to do was live in the US. I was one of those people who had "the American dream". And the first time I went to New York, I was 17 years old and told my father: "How can anyone live anywhere else in the world?" I wanted to live there one day, and I did.
5. Being a news presenter on live TV... and the head of English News as my very first job. I was in a little over my head, they just sort of thrust me into presenting the news bulletin after just two screen-tests and voila... at 23 it was pretty cool.
6. Being one of the founding members of an NGO for children... and then working there for two years, helping improve different children's programs in NGOs across Lebanon. 
7. Acting in the TV/Web Series "Beirut I Love You"... Actually, not just the acting, being a part of it in general was one of the best times of my life. It was an incredible experience to be part of a group of young, passionate people who just loved working on this for no other reason then the pleasure of doing it. The only time in my life when waking up at 5am was exciting!
8. Writing my blog, Beirut Rhapsodies... For two years, it was a weekly piece of writing that kept me going. And it has reached over 80-thousand views, which in the age of social media may not mean much, but it means a lot to me. Because in between those views, there are people who took the time to write me and tell me how much my writing meant to them. And that is priceless. Again, every writer's dream.
9. Getting my own apartment... after years and years of sharing, couch surfing, living with boyfriends and going back and forth from my father's house, I finally have a place that is just my own, on my own.
10. Writing a novel... Last year I quit my job and moved to New York to start writing a book. And I will be a lot happier/prouder/relieved when it's actually finished, but creativity works in mysterious ways and time isn't always on my side. Still, the writing of this book, the work I've put in it, the research and what it's made me discover has been a fascinating journey so far.

As for one thing that I'd like to mention and end with, as something I'm extremely blessed to have, it would be my friends. I have the luxury of having not one, not two, but a whole family of amazing friends, some of them who've been there my entire life. I remember a time, when I was 11 years old --I didn't really have any friends, and I'd spend the entire recess time hiding in the school library, behind a book. It was the loneliest I'd ever been. One of my greatest fears in life is being alone. But when you have good friends, you just never are.