Goodbye Teenage Years! Turning 20.

So it's official. I'm 20 years old today and I'm excited to grow up a little bit more, but sad to say goodbye to being a teenager. I feel like you get away with a lot more, but being 20 puts adult life into focus as it means I'll no longer get the "awwww still a baby" response... I hope. When I turned 19, I mentioned my life is very different to the way I would thought it would go, but this is a good thing. There are loads of things I wanted to do before I turn twenty and luckily, I’ve managed to accomplish a few of them.

I never went to university, but from being young I knew I wanted to do something creative and something linked with fashion. I went through the full spectrum of wanted to design, and then realised I have not inherited any of the skills my mum has and can’t even cut in a straight line. I also wanted to be an editor, but slowly learned that the non-stop, quick-paced lifestyle isn’t the one for a laid-back Yorkshire lass like me. That’s when Anika May came about, and I’m so glad I decided to create this little corner of the internet for me to ramble on about everything and anything. Plus, blogging has provided a whole load of opportunities for me, especially during this last year.

I wanted to make some new friends before I start acting like a real adult, not that I didn’t have friends before, we just weren’t close. But last year, I went on a random trip with a group of amazing people and now every single of them are humans I would consider a really close friend. It’s great to have people to actually talk to and who appreciate friendship! I’m also a lot closer to my little sister, which is unexpected as we are polar opposites. My sister and I can fight over absolutely anything; we once argued over a pencil that I thought was red and she believed was “a deep blood-like orange” (it was totally red). But now we have a pretty close relationship and she takes some of my outfit photos for me, meaning I can shoot on location.

Before I turned 20, I wanted to be sure blogging is the career for me. I’m happy to say it is, and it’s a hobby and I completely adore. Whenever I’m bored, I turn to blogging. And that could be stalking other blogs and building my ever-growing blogroll or creating a new draft for Anika May. While I was 19, I visited the Next Blogger Network Event in London which was total dream come true. Not only did I meet Danielle Peazer, Jen Stanbrook, Samantha Maria and Rosie Fortescue – bloggers I have admired for years, but I also learned a lot about the industry and won a runner-up award!

During this last year, I went to BBC Radio 1Xtra Live (with my new group of friends) and this was such a ridiculously amazing night, I’ll never forget it. Similarly, I got to visit Oslo with two amazing ladies I’ve known for quite a while and we were able to explore a city on my bucket list and take a lot of photos! Oslo is one of the most exquisite cities I’ve been to, the people and the atmosphere is so relaxed and it’s a really blissful environment to be in – I would happily move there one day.

My nineteenth year of life has been life-changing, I’ve had a full-time office job (which I managed to escape), I went through a period of wearing acrylic nails (never again), cleared my skin of acne (thank goodness) and saved enough money to start learning to drive (finally)! There’s so much more I want to experience, and I can’t wait to get started on building Anika May as well as the two charities I work for and continue to develop: Clothing Solutions and Beaneezy – make sure to check them out and give the Facebook pages a like if you can. Neither are government funded and benefit an enormous amount of disabled people in the UK.

Here’s to being an adult!