about the blog

welcome to 16til26*!

hello! my name is izzy, and i am the creator of 16til26*.

when I was 16 years old, i started a blog.

it started out as a personal blog; i shared whatever thoughts came into my head, offered advice and insight whenever I could and reflected on my shortcomings and mused about all the lovely things in my life. i always emphasised the fact that i was still a teenager and, though i was spewing all kinds of things on the internet with some sort of naïve confidence, all i could really do is offer perspective.

so, i did that, for about a year~

then, as i gained more readers, and heard the stories of others. i realized how foggy and uncertain this time period is.. ages 16 to 26…. how much change happens?? from dire adolescence bulldozing your way into steep adulthood??

so i decided to make 16til26*. i was just a 16 year old trying to figure out why the hell no one has ever talked about all of this. why it’s so difficult to picture it? what happens when and in what order? when do you get a job? when do you figure out your major? what am i supposed to do?

year by year, it became abundantly clear why!!!! every one was talking about this time period! it’s every tv show, movie, song, comedy special, tweet…. it’s everything! we’re all processing so much, all the time, and we’re all mining ourselves for meaning and explanations for what’s going on. everyone is changing. you’re changing. you have 100 convictions in 100 different directions and they change every day. your friends are changing, your desires are changing. even i stopped wanting to share things on here because the problems were just getting too big and too difficult to share on here. there is obviously no one size fits all approach to tackling ages 16til26…. you just try your best and keep your eyes open along the way.

at 21 years old, i realized that i probably didn’t know what to expect about the future when i was a teenager because i didn’t really see myself in any of the stuff i saw out there. nothing about anything out in the media truly resonated with me as a viable path. as a cosmically strong-willed yet indecisive person, there is a stubbornness to the way i understand myself, my path, my identity. i fashioned my sense of self in strikingly tangible and intangible ways by constantly creating, in order to process my life publicly.

that said, i don’t have any of the answers. i never have. i had the blinding confidence to claim that i could find the answers one day when i was 16, sure! that’s because i really thought i needed to have them, for a long time. i thought i needed to give them to you. i thought i needed them for myself. so i gave up on that front, i even gave up on writing for a while because i didn’t have anything to say or share that i felt comfortable processing in front of you. i was stressed out of my mind with everything at 19 and i couldn’t bring myself to tell you that. i liked coming onto this blog at the end of the tunnel, at the finish line- telling you what i’ve learned and how i learned it…

but now we arrive 22! the latest developments of the blog. i have just graduated college, and now work full-time. i am living in my childhood home right now, and i guess, with it, i’ve come home to this site as well.

i started a youtube channel in november 2020 after dreaming about it for a looongg time, and i realized that i now had a different purpose online. i don’t want to do all my dirty laundry in front of you guys anymore, like i did in the first few years of this blog, because i want to give myself some boundaries that i never felt entitled to back then. as work takes up more time, i create less videos but have more to say– thus, a return to writing here and there.

my purpose for this platform now is to give you peace, quiet, comfort, love, encouragement, laughter, everything in between. here, i’ll share things i make, i’ll share little and big things on my mind. honestly, at this point, i think i am simply building a shrine here to my youth and maybe that is enough. whether or not i share these things with you on this site in real time, with any sort of formality or construction– this site seems to shift and grow into a breathing anthology of myself and where i’ve come from and where i hope to go. not a platform for Content, but just a nook of my life where i consolidate all of my loose creative ends spread about the internet.

that’s all i want for now, and i think i’m ready for that. i’m ready for boundaries, but i’m also ready to open myself up to you through these videos, through my own voice and my own face, so that we can get to know each other even better. i hope to bring a little levity, a little perspective, a little comfort here and there.

so that’s where we are now ❤ i update this about page every year or so, and it’s wild that the story has gotten this long after 6 years.

i love you, you’re getting better and better everyday,

see you soon ❤

-izzy, *22