2019 Recap
It’s a little hard for me to believe that I’m sitting here at the beginning of a brand new decade.
I’m not going to say that I didn’t think I would make it this far…I did. But I pictured my life to look a bit different than it does right now.
As I’m typing this, the world is supposedly on the brink of its third world war, Justin Bieber is making music again, people are making thousands of dollars off a viral/trend app called TikTok, I’m on my 6th year abroad – still running solo dolo, looking to make moves to close out my last year in Thailand.
I guess this is the post where I tell you I’m moving at the end of the school year and am finally(?) ending an almost 6-year chapter of my life. It’s safe to say that I’m feeling more nostalgic than usual writing this end of year recap.
One of the biggest things that I believe has come out of 2019 is that I’m finally at a point where I’m not only comfortable with my age, but I feel like I’m the age I’m supposed to be. I stopped spending time wishing I was a few years older or a few years younger. It was like I finally realized the value of being 27 years old and from that realization, I found my independence.
You would think that after 5 years abroad, I would have found my independence long before this year, when in fact, it’s the opposite that seems the most true.
When I first moved, it was about proving to my parents that I didn’t need them anymore; that I was able to survive without them and forge my own path into the “wilderness of the world”. I didn’t picture myself being gone for more than 2 years. Then slowly, as that reality morphed into the one I’m currently living, I found myself reassessing the things I wanted and the person I wanted to become, and I gotta say, I’m pretty pleased with the result.
One of the biggest questions I get as an expat is “What are you going to do after this”? 2019 was about falling in love with the fact that there is no “after this” and making moves to continue this life abroad.
So that’s why come August,
I’m moving!
I got a job in Kuala Lumpur! This past November, I signed a contract to teach middle school/high school math at Mont Kiara. For the past year or so, I’ve felt this stagnation about living in Chiang Mai. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve come to realize how fortunate I am to have called Chiang Mai home for the past 5 years, but I’ve always known that I can’t live here forever – so it’s time to move on.
2019 was also the year of a new kind of travel for me. Solo Traveling. Traveling by myself had always just something I admired that other people did…not me. But then I realized that there was a whole world to see out there and I wasn’t going to let my fear of having a safety net stop me. I pushed myself to actually do the things that I wanted to do regardless if other people weren’t keen to do them with me. As a result I’ve been happier and more content with the decisions I’ve made this year.
Some of the places I traveled solo this year:
Hong Kong
Vietnam x2
Taiwan
Turkey
Singapore
The only big trip I took with a friend was to Myanmar, which was pretty awesome in itself. I mean just look at it…
I also moved into my first house!!
For the past 4 years I’d been living at the school I work at which provides on campus housing. Finally feeling a little stir crazy, I left and decided to become more of an adult. I mean, I even have a yard! Look how cute it is! It’s not come without its challenges (aka not being able to hang anything on the wall because it’s too humid and cockroaches run around when it’s hot outside aka all the dang time) but the house is mine and it blows my mind that it even took this long to think about moving to begin with.
It’s also been the year of health issues. They aren’t always the easiest for me to write about, but I think it’s important to emphasize that my life abroad – while sometimes glamorous – isn’t without its issues. I started this year with the worst pain in my back and had to go get an MRI to check it out. Turns out I have/had a herniated disk right above another disk that was strangely thin. Then to top this off, the week prior, a guy I went out with messaged that I needed to go and get checked out because he’d tested positive for an STI…. PERFECT. While that one was easy enough to test and fix, it sent my mental state in a freaking frenzy. I ended 2019 with another MRI telling me I had a partially torn rotator cuff and insane inflammation in my shoulder area annnnnd I’m officially the fattest I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve crossed a threshold I naively thought I was too good for and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified by the work I know I’m going to have to put in to get rid of the excess….meat?
All of that being said, it’s still been one of the best years I’ve had abroad. Even with all the crazy shit that’s happened, I feel so confident about who I’ve become and know what I have to do to keep the momentum going.
2020 Manifestations
Y’all might have noticed, but I’m not the best at the follow-through when it concerns projects that aren’t related to the work I do at school. And so each year, I end up trying new things to try to keep my motivations up throughout the year.
I’ve given up resolutions in the traditional sense, but looking around me, it seems a lot of you have too. This year I’ll be creating a digital vision board. I want something that I’ll have access to really quickly so I can constantly see the dreams I came up with at the beginning of the year.
The idea is that I’ll keep it as my laptop background so I’m guaranteed to look at it every single day. I also know other people who have made it their phone background instead…so that’s also something to keep in mind.
When I was doing my dream dump, I realized a lot of my visions were the end results of the things I’d been building in 2020. Along with my top places to travel to in 2020 (Hello India!) I’m envisioning a year of abundance; of being able to shed habits I picked up as a teenager to replace ones that are more in line with my lifestyle today. Here are some examples:
2020 Goals
1. Build my business to consistently make passive income I can rely on
2. Read 1 non-fiction book for every 5 fiction books I read
3. Be intentional with the time I spend on social media
4. Build a posting schedule for my socials that promotes consistency.
5. Clean up my language and be more intentional with the things I say – stop speaking to fill silence
6. Travel to at least 4 different countries this year – hopefully, all new ones.
If these things don’t happen it won’t be the end of the world, but they are all things I would like to see accomplished by the time I get to writing this same thing in 2021. Making sure you create actionable steps towards your goals is one of the biggest ways to be successful. I forget where I read it but there’s a quote somewhere that says – It’s easy to dream big, but it’s the making those dreams happen that’s the hard part – (That’s more just a paraphrase than I direct quote.
I just wanted to write a quick thank you to the people who read this blog. It blows my mind every day that there are people who genuinely enjoy the content that I post and write about. You’re the reason that I’m still writing and still making this happen. I hope that you enjoy and follow along in my 2020 adventures!
xo
Ari
