I have officially reached level 24 in the game of life today, which means it’s time for a special birthday post. Last year, I posted 23 Things I Wish I Could Tell My Younger Self, and the year before that, I posted 22 Lessons I Learned In 22 Years. Since those two posts are very closely related, I wanted to avoid doing another generic “xx Lessons I Learned in xx Years,” as well as the usual introspective post I tend to default to. After a long list of ideas and suggestions for birthday posts, I finally settled on this one, where I’m going to share and explain 24 things I keep in my shoe box of memories. If you frequent this blog often, or have read my latest posts, it should come as no surprise that I’m an incredibly sentimental person. Every gift, photo, card, letter, and knick knack has accumulated into a shoe box I keep tucked away in my closet that I go through every so often. Since I obviously can’t share every single artifact that I’ve collected over the years, I recruited the help of my roommates (hey Reece and Conor) to choose 24 random things from my box that I could share with you, the reader, to salute my 24 years here on Earth. Without further ado, here are 24 memories from my special shoe box.

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