The highs and lows of 2021

Here we are again, my round-up blog post of the year! And this one is an interesting one, as I'm writing it with my elbows bashing against the car door, as me and Ollie drive down to Heathrow for our last holiday of 2021 and our first of 2022! This year has been a little tumultuous and has certainly been full of highs and lows. While some people may use that as a reason to write it off as a bad year, I prefer to consider it a success. Afterall, it's the highs and lows in life (and on a heart monitor) that prove we're alive! Here are some of mine from 2021...

Covid and lockdowns

I'll keep this section brief as frankly I'm bored of hearing and talking about it (as I'm sure most of you are too). But the lockdowns of the first half of the year, all of the uncertainty of right now and all of the ever changing guidance and restrictions have been one of the rougher parts of the year. But certainly less so than last year so that's something to be thankful for at least!

Life returning to something familiar

Something covid did give us was an appreciation for all the things we once considered normal or even mundane. When April rolled around and we were allowed to sit in the garden with a few tinnies and 5 friends, life had never felt so good. Never again will I take for granted the simple pleasures in life!

Losing my grandad

A few weeks before my birthday in June, my grandad sadly passed away. He'd been ill with a bad heart and worsening dementia for atleast a few years, and he was a very ripe age and had lived a very good, long life. But those factors don't make it all that easier to say goodbye, especially since he'd spent the last year of his life mostly alone because of lockdown. The good part is that he's reunited with my grandma now (if you believe in all that stuff) and that I have a lifetime of happy memories with him to cherish.

Lots of amazing holidays

The worst part of 2020 for me was being trapped on plague island and not being allowed to leave. So I pledged that as soon as we could go, we were going. And boy did we go! Gibraltar in June, Edinburgh in July, Cyprus in August, Malta in October and The Maldives in November. Every holiday we went on ticked off a new country and it was so exciting to finally be able to start seeing the world again. It's been an amazing year for holidays and I hope that things continue this way into 2022; hopefully with a few family and friend holidays this year as well as the monthly baecations.

Getting a new car

Having passed my test in 2017, I got myself a little run-around red Peugeot 107 that was the spitting image of the car emoji. I loved it from the very beginning; it was cute and tiny enough to make parking slightly easier and it somehow miraculously always passed its MOT (despite me knocking it around a fair bit). But by the end of last year, I started to feel ready for an upgrade and so I decided that once I got a new job and was settled in it, I would treat myself. I'd had my eye on a TT for about 2 years and when I saw one in the brightest shade of blue you've ever seen, it was love at first sight. Finding a blue one was no mean feat though as they were pretty rare, but the universe was smiling down on me (as it so often seems to) and I found the perfect TTS that was everything I was looking for. 

Being too blessed to be stressed

I think the last two years have very much been about appreciating what we have rather than getting what we want. And I have a hell of a lot to appreciate! An incredible family, a wonderful boyfriend, amazing friends, a great career, a beautiful home and a diary jam-packed with adventures. I feel so lucky to live the life I do and I plan to spend 2022 continuing to make the most of every minute. 

2022

I always like to end the year by reviewing how I did with my new years resolutions and setting some new ones for the year ahead. Yes new years resolutions are a bit of a cliché and largely pointless (if you want to do something, you can do it any time right?) but I like to make them anyway. And most of the time I succeed at them too! How did I do with this year's?

1. Be less wasteful

Everyone is focusing on the environment more and more and so I wanted to make sure I was doing my bit. It's hard to measure this one without literally measuring this one (and what kind of loser would do that?) but I'd say I managed it. I think carefully about material things and food to make sure I waste as little as possible and I always try to avoid plastic packaging where I can. Now if big corporations could just do their bit too that'd be great!

2. Read more

This one definitely gets a big fat tick! I wrote in my blog post that I was shooting for atleast 5 books read in 2021 and in the end, I managed 12! I love reading and I'm so glad I've got back into it. I'd say holidays definitely play a big part in that.

3. Get a new job

If you saw this blog post, you'll know that this resolution got a big fat tick only 3 weeks into the year. Well, it is so like me to be an overachiever. And now I'm heading for my 1 year anniversary at Dice, I've made a whole company's worth of new friends and I've been to a number of cool events too. A very successful new years resolution if you ask me!

So what about for 2022 then? I'm actually setting a magic number of resolutions again; there's just something very satisfying about it.

1. Reduce screen time

It's hard to avoid really when you work an office job that entails being on a laptop or computer for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. But lately, I've been feeling like I'm on a constant rotation between my medium screen (laptop), big screen (TV) and small screen (phone). So this year I want to make more of an effort to reduce this, whether it's through being more active, getting outdoors more or even just doing things like reading and playing games. We're going back to basics baby!

2. Take better care of my skin

My attitudes to my skin have changed a lot over the years as I used to get semi-regular sunbeds and now the thought of it puts the fear of god in me. The older I get, the more I feel like I should be taking better care of my skin, whether that's wearing SPF on my face year-round or looking after my hands in the cold weather. I think it's time to invest some money and time into improving!

3. Learn French and Spanish

I've been keen for a while to pick up my languages again and watching Emily in Paris not long ago, they were speaking about all the languages they speak. It made me realise how lazy we are as Brits and how we just expect everyone to know English. I got an A in French at GCSE and I learnt Spanish for a year about 10 years ago so I'm not starting from zero, but the goal is to be fluent in both. I've picked these two languages because I think they'll be the most useful for where I plan to go over the coming years; most of Africa speaks French and most of South America speaks Spanish. We'll see how I get on!