15 on the 15th.

15 on the 15th.§

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I'm fifteen. That feels strange to type. I was fourteen approximately five minutes ago, and now I'm supposed to be a year older, a year wiser, and presumably a little better at figuring life out. Two out of three would be nice.

Fourteen was a great year. You know what happened. So much has changed that I genuinely don't know where to begin. My ambitions have changed, my goals have changed, VECTOR has changed, and somewhere along the way, I have changed too. Things I once thought were important aren't necessarily important anymore, and things I could barely imagine a year ago are now things I'm actively working towards. I don't think I could have predicted what this year would look like, and I doubt I'll be able to predict the next one either.

I've learned a lot, some of it the hard way. Trust is a rare commodity. Hard work is non-negotiable. And if you think you're working hard enough, there's probably still room to do better. I've realised that wanting something and actually achieving it are two very different things. You can have ideas, plans, and all the ambition in the world, but eventually you have to sit down and do the work. Nobody can do that part for you.

And I want to do a lot. I want to build things, learn things, and achieve things that currently seem ridiculously far away. I want to look back at my work and know that I gave it everything I had. Success is what I'm chasing. I want to win, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

The slightly terrifying part is how much I want to do and how little time I seem to have. College is getting closer, resources aren't unlimited, and there are only so many hours in a day. Sometimes I look at everything I want to accomplish and wonder how I'm supposed to fit it all in. I don't have an answer. I just know that I don't want to spend years talking about things I could have done when I could have spent that time trying to do them.

Still, I hope I remember to enjoy being fifteen, too. It's easy to become so obsessed with the next goal that you forget you're actually living your life right now. I don't want to look back at this age and remember nothing except deadlines, projects, and things I hadn't achieved yet. There's more to life than a list of accomplishments, even if I sometimes need reminding of that.

To the twenty-five-year-old reading this: I hope we did it. I hope we put in the hours, endured the frustrating parts, learned from the failures, and kept going when things didn't work out. I hope we built things we were proud of and became someone we respect. And if we're not where we wanted to be, I hope we haven't given up. The goals may change, the plans may fall apart, and life may take us somewhere unexpected, but I hope we never lose the willingness to try.

I don't know what fifteen will bring. I might achieve things I can't currently imagine, or I might discover that some of the things I want today aren't what I want tomorrow. I'll probably make mistakes, change my mind, and occasionally wonder what on earth I'm doing. That's life, I suppose.

Fourteen was a great year. I'm proud of what I've done, excited about what's ahead, and slightly terrified of how much there is left to do.

It's the fifteenth, and I'm fifteen. Ten years from now, I'll read this again and see what became of all these ambitions.

For now, there's work to do.

-Vihaan Vaghela.