2018: My Year In Review

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I love having a blog because I can use it as a platform to talk about my goals, expectations and mishaps of the year. I’m not one to have New Years Resolutions. It’s not me trying to sound cool but I’m in constant strive for improvement all year round and don’t like to focus heavily on resolutions at the beginning of the year. Honestly, I didn’t have that many goals for 2018 as it was a year I had been waiting for-my college graduation year. As far as I was concerned, all I needed to achieve in 2018 was to graduate and start a good full-time job. I didn’t think on January 1st 2018, I would start a blog at some point in the year and here we are. Now that I’m a full-time adult, I’m going to think about 2018 year in review and plan out 2019.

2018 Highlights

Blog

I sometimes still can’t believe I started a blog. I’m typically not the one to put myself out there but I guess this is what growth looks like. I’m really happy I started it because it’s something that is all mine and not to be gloomy, but right now, if i die, it will end with me and that makes it that more exciting. I started an Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook & Twitter for the blog but still promoted from my personal pages. I got the most love from Pinterest, Facebook and my personal Twitter account. I’ve become an avid stats analyst and my fav stat to track is the number of countries I’ve received a view from on my blog. The number today is 58 countries across all continents. I was also excited to actually get travel bookings done through my travel search engine.

Most viewed posts of the year:

1. 15 Things to Know Before Visiting Germany
2. How to Hack Spirit Airlines Without Losing Your Mind
3. 48 Hours in Vancouver, BC

Travel & Career

As this is a travel & career blog, I’m going to talk about my year in relation to both. First of all, I traveled quite a bit this year! (RIP my bank account & thanks to those that sponsored some). Also, 2018 was the year I graduated and started working full-time.  I’m going to run through the year;

January: Went to Seattle twice

February: No highlight 🙁

March: Went to Cancun, Mexico for a week; Went to Seattle; Took the GMAT

April: Went to Seattle twice

May: I graduated with my Bachelors in Chemical Engineering!!; Moved out of DC to Seattle

June (My Birthday Month): Left Seattle for Detroit and Calgary, Canada

July: Started working my remote contract role as a Program Manager(PM) for a startup

August: Went back to Seattle; Took a trip to Vancouver

September: Took a trip to Portland; Ended PM role; Moved to Philadelphia

October: Started full-time job; Travelled to Germany

November: No highlight 🙁

December: Office Christmas party; Went to Seattle; 3 European cities for the holidays!

It took a lot to remember all that. I’m not even 100% sure I remembered everything. I’ll try better in 2019 to keep track of my year. The monthly summary is definitely a gross understatement of my year. Amidst all the wonderful things that happened last year, 2018 was a terrible year for me emotionally. No need to go into details on all that but I’m looking forward to a better 2019. It’s only up from here. Australia is still my ultimate travel dream destination. I didn’t make it happen in 2018 and I’m not sure if it will happen in 2019 but we’ll have to wait and find out.

2019 Goals

1. Publish more: Aim for once a week (This is very ambitious)
2. Go on at least 2 international trips
3. Make more merchandise
4. Publish more career posts here or on LinkedIn
5. Have an amazing year!

I honestly don’t have that many goals for the year. I want my blog, personal life and career to have a successful 2019 and I can already envision how to achieve that. It will mostly take working hard consistently to get there. How was your 2018? Any changes planned for the new year? Let me know in the comments.

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