So, 6 years ago in July 2015 I was 20 years old and posing in front of a miniature pig house in Coimbra for a friend also named Petra. We were about in the middle of our trip around Portugal, our second summer trip after we went to Spain in 2013. I recently recreated the same photo with a random fellow tourist and I figured it was the perfect opportunity for a bit of retrospective:

6 years later

6 years earlier I was young and I didn’t feel tired all the time, but I felt older than I do now. Back then I wanted to squeeze the world like it was my oyster, now I wish I could hug it, mend all its hurts and kiss it good night.

6 years earlier I weighed less, but I still didn’t look good in the mirror. Now that I care more about how my body feels than looks, the world’s gone all body positive and clothes don’t fit anyone anymore.

6 years earlier I wasn’t disillusioned with work, academia, the industry and capitalism. I had grand engineering dreams and no perspective. Now the future is now and the science has never felt slower, more real, more inspiring and more constrained.

6 years earlier I didn’t know about pandemics, isolation and housing prices and climate change was just a haze lurking on the horizon. Now the planet is running a fever and we are pushing our heads through the wall, but hey, at least we banned plastic straws.

6 years later the world is a lot bleaker and more uncertain, but I am wildly in love, both with myself and my life, and that’s all that I could’ve hoped for.