Dream big, be humble.

At 25 years old, I find myself in the live music capital of the world, working for the best company in the world. Yes, Austin has more live music venues per capita than anywhere else on the planet and Fortune Magazine calls Google the best company to work for, year after year.

At 25 years old, I have lived and visited some of the most beautiful places in the world, including Boulder, San Francisco, Seattle, Bolivia, Haiti, France, Senegal, United Arab Emirates and India and established the most fruitful friendships I could ever imagine.

At 25 years old, I've been in love exactly three times and find myself single for the first time in eight years and in my adult life. In retrospect, it amazes me to have discovered three drastically different people who I can love equally and will always love in some capacity the rest of my life. Love hurts, but it hurts so good.

At 25 years old, I have never felt so humbled as I do in this moment, with the opportunity to share a few words with a {presumably} attentive audience and reflect on a blessed life that I don't take for granted for an instant.

My name is Heather Koski and I grew up in rural Colorado, in a town of 700 inhabitants. Throughout our childhood, my parents encouraged my two sisters and I to think outside of the box of our hometown and dream big.

That idea commenced with an academic year abroad for each of us, in Finland, France and Australia, respectively, and evolved into a love of traveling, curiosity of different cultures and the constant yearning to learn more to enhance our minds and engage our souls.

While living in France, I became enamored by words and the comfort I found in writing as I was learning to speak French. At this time, I also found great joy in running, which eventually transitioned into high school track and now competitive racing.

I can honestly say that my life is presently a pleasant combination of my education, interests and dreams, but that I'm not satisfied yet. At which point, time constraints have ceased my writing, but I leave you with a quote that has always resonated with me:

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

- T.S. Eliot

Dream big, be humble.


Heather Koski
@heathermkoski
heathermkoski[AT]gmail.com
Austin, TX

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