2017 In a Nutshell

And so 2017 is officially over.

2018 has begun.

So firstly,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope you all had a wonderful new year however you chose to celebrate. In all honesty, I don't really know how I feel about 2017. Or the fact that it's over.

 

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2017

I went travelling for four months 

I'm sure you all know about this trip because I certainly talk about it enough. I guess this was the biggest thing that happened in 2017. And by far the most exciting.

Four months seems like a long time until your sat on your flight back to the UK wondering why you're already returning home.

I won't go into too much detail about the trip in this post because I'm writing a post dedicated to my travel in 2017.

I adjusted to life after graduation

Ok so I did this in 2016 as well but 2017 was my first full year out of education. While a lot of my friends were well into their grad jobs I was figuring out my next steps. 

I learnt a lot about myself

Other than the whole jumping on a plane for four months, I don't feel like I actually did a lot or achieved much in 2017. The rest of my year was either spent planning the trip or mourning the fact that it was over. Oh, and working at a local coffee shop, blogging and doing housework. 

However, I had a lot of time to think last year. I've learnt a lot and I've grown in confidence. I think travelling helped with this, I wouldn't exactly say I found myself but I realised a lot of things and have had time to think about what I want to focus on in 2018.

I read 5 books

Yep, that's the number of books I managed to read in the whole year. Bad I know. I really didn't read much at all whilst travelling especially compared to my two week Mexico trip where I read 8 books. The Netflix app is in part to blame, the times I usually read were filled with Netflix instead.

DID I MEET MY GOALS?

I set myself some goals at the start of 2017 and have just looked back at them to see if I achieved any. The short answer is yes. But seeing as this is a reflection post I thought I'd also bore you with the details of these goals. 

I set myself 9 goals at the start of the year and I'd say I can tick off around 5 of them. Which I guess is pretty good going. Especially as I had forgotten what most of them were by the end of the January. 

1. Less coffee, more tea

I don't rely on coffee to get me through the day anymore. In fact, I've been drinking less and less. Except while I was in Asia as sometimes I really did need a (very bad) coffee to wake me up. I think I might be becoming a tea person. Which is something I didn't think I'd ever find myself saying. 

I always choose a cup of tea over a cup of coffee in the evenings now. However, I'm still very much a coffee drinker when I'm out and about, especially if it contains caramel syrup!

2. Travel

This was a pretty broad goal. I knew that I'd be doing some travelling in 2017 so this was a pretty easy goal to meet.

3. Improve my budgeting skills

Something that can still be improved but is a lot better. I think travelling for so long helped me be more careful when it came to budgeting. I couldn't just brush something off as a treat because I had a set amount of money that had to last me for the whole trip.

4. Continue to blog and grow my blog

Well, I'm still blogging so I think I can tick this off. The growth of my blog has been slower than I wanted but I did take a four-month break while travelling and haven't been the most active on social media.

5. Be more spontaneous 

This is a goal that's a bit more difficult to measure. It's also a pretty subjective goal, something may seem spontaneous to one person but a normal activity to someone else. I think, personally, I've achieved this goal even if most of the time it was smaller things.

WHAT'S IN STORE FOR 2018

2017 was a year to get back on track with my blog, however, I wasn't as consistent as I wanted to be. In part, this was due to my four month trip to Asia, while I planned posts for while I was away I didn't schedule enough so there was a good couple of months of nothing. 

I want to be more consistent this year and also improve my content. I still have a lot of posts to write for places I visited during my trip so expect to see these over the next couple of months. 

I'm off to Copenhagen in early February so I'm hoping to produce some content for this trip. Also, that thing I talked about in my last nutshell post that I can't say much about yet is a lot more certain now but still not certain enough for me to tell you what it is. But if it all goes to plan I should have a lot of exciting content from April! 

Lifestyle posts are also something I'd like to post more of. I've realised that while travel is very much my focus I enjoy writing lifestyle posts.

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I hope all of you started the new year well. If you have a 2017 summary post then leave a link as I'd love to have a read!

Sophie