The last puzzle piece to make up my year – my twenty-seventh birthday.

I hold birthdays to a pretty high standard – it’s your day! You’ve got 24 hours that are designated to be solely yours – whatever that means to you.

I’ve been pretty jazzed to turn twenty-seven. It felt like coming home – much like 2019 feels like coming home. Since my birthday falls so closely to the end of the year, December has become an even deeper month of reflection for me. I tend to not only think about what the new year will bring, but a new age.

Last year I had one of the best birthday celebrations to-date. My friends and family gathered at Playwrights Tavern in midtown on the first snowfall of the year and partied-down with me. So many people passed through and watched me drink (and drop) a lot of cosmopolitans. My mama and I took a lemon drop shot together (what?) and I ended up housing four extra people in my teeny-tiny studio apartment.

This year my day was spent laughing over brunch, working at Pretty Woman, eating and drinking at our holiday party, and dancing and singing Amy Winehouse’s “Valarie” onstage at Haswell Greens with a slice of pizza in hand with some of my closest pals. Twenty-seven felt more sophisticated, more down-to-earth. Twenty-seven feels more like me.

I dig you, 27. I think I’ll wear you well for like another year or so.