I'm Mia, eighteen years old. I'm caught in that odd in-between — too old to be a girl, too young to be a woman. I don't go looking for myself; I build myself, the way a writer builds a character in a story that doesn't exist yet. Every new thing I try isn't about finding what I love — it's about proving what no longer scares me.

My Wish List — or the things I want before I stop being afraid of wanting. ✦ Run a marathon I haven't trained for. Fail spectacularly. Cross the finish line anyway, last, with my shoes in my hand. ✦ Tell the truth when a small lie would be easier. Watch what happens. Keep watching. ✦ Learn to sit in a café alone without a book, a phone, or a reason. Just a coffee and the noise of other people's lives. ✦ Buy something I can't afford and don't need — once. Not for the thing. For the practice of allowing myself. ✦ Forgive someone who never apologised. Not for them. For the space it frees up in me. ✦ Have a friendship that survives a decade of silence. Pick up the phone like no time passed at all. ✦ And most importantly — stop measuring my life in accomplishments. Measure it in afternoons that didn't need to end.

I collect excuses. Not to avoid things — to begin them. The urge to learn bookbinding at 11 p.m. The idea to bike to a town I can't pronounce. The "what if I just…" from the shower. I keep them on scraps in a jar by the door, when I'm bored, I pull one out, give myself ten minutes, and see if it survives. Most don't. The ones that do rearrange my week. I also love getting lost on purpose. I take a bus to an unfamiliar stop and walk in whatever direction feels wrong. I read names on mailboxes, peek into corner shops, follow a dog that seems to know where it's going. Sometimes I end up nowhere. Sometimes somewhere I'll return to for years. At home, I break things. Not out of anger — out of interest. An old radio, a broken watch, a chair from the street. Half never work again. But I've learned more from the insides of things than from any manual. My hobbies are experiments. They don't have to succeed. They just have to be mine. They keep me restless. Curious. Awake. And that's all I need.