I have spent the last few hours decluttering my iPhoto library. For the past seven years I have only transferred photos from device to device and needless to say it added up. Six years ago it was still possible to afford a MacBook Pro and MacBook Pros used to have an USB port so it was very easy to just add data beyond measure. Two years ago that baby drew his last breath, after I kicked the laundry basket it was in so hard I broke my toe. I now own a MacBook Air - much sleeker, much lighter and a much smaller storage.

So to download much needed updates (and much more importantly to download Sims 4 for free) and because I have been down with a cold that tied me to the couch I finally got to declutter my photos. I still can´t really believe I racked up over 20.000 photos (?!???!) over the past years and especially not that so many of them are so intensely blurry I can´t even detect what I took a picture of.

It was also great (and slightly cringey) to take a trip down memory lane. To 13 year old me, who was so incredibly awkward, nerdy and always making up her own little stories in her head. A girl, who never used make-up, but walked through school with her nose in a book in cowboy boots, because my mum thought they would be trendy again soon. No wonder I was not very popular. To 14 year old me, who finally got contact lenses and a hair cut and at the end of the year her very first boyfriend. To 15 year old me, who got another terrible and now at least among my friends iconic hair cut and another boyfriend. The girl, who finally learned to shut her mouth and fit in (at least a little bit) with the cooler crowd at school, but still majorly felt like an outsider. To 16 year old me, who went through her first big break-up around the same time her mum and stepdad split up and who went on an exchange year to America thinking it would make it all better. To me crying in the shower of a trailer in Alabama, beyond stressed because me and my host-family did not get along at all and because I so desperately wanted to have the amazing exchange year everyone promised me. To flying back home early, because I just could not take it anymore and to feeling like my entire life had fallen apart in the span of five months. To 17 year old me, who went out loads with her friends, who was so unhappy, but that summer had an amazing vacation with her friends in Bulgaria. To believing I would never fall in love again only to give my heart to the wrong guy at age 18 and then finally a nice new boyfriend at 19, who I very much did not appreciate. Funny how that works. To graduating high school at 19 and finally moving out of the city I grew up in and which I felt so terrible in for so long. To 20 year old me, who headed off to Chile and loved every second of living on a remote horse-farm, who drank Pisco and finally learned Spanish. Who cried hysterically on the plane and was so terrified, but was the happiest she has ever been while she got up at seven and rode five horses a day. It is so funny to look back at all the stuff that happened over the past years, to all the places I went, to remember seeing pink dolphins in the Amazon and going skinny-dipping in Thailand, to starting my Bachelor in Sweden, having that first cup of coffee in my flat and feeling the vast amount of possibility in the air. And to me now. 26 with my Master degree and my dream job lined up and even more amazing places, that I have seen over the years. I wonder if 13 year old me would like me. Or 16 year old me. I am pretty sure they would be excited about the job. They would be shocked at the fact, that I work out regularly and like it. They would find it hilarious, that I do Yoga. They would love that I still read and find it hilarious/disgusting that I am dating a guy with a beard now. I think I did pretty well. And I am pretty sure they would be thankful to me for deleting some of these pictures.