2018 has been a year. I’m lucky that the brunt of negative energy bypassed me throughout most of those 12 months, and I’ve almost always had something wonderful to look forwards to to offset the impending sense of doom. I’ve also been #blessed to have such a great group of friends / support network around me, which is something to really be cherished when you’re trying to stay sane in a different country, and all you want in a mum-hug, but your mum is the other side of the world, 8 or 9 hours behind, and has never been to the country you’re in. It’s not exactly the same, but choosing your friends, and them being absolute champs and standup members of society and just all around wonderful when you’re not sure if your concern is legitimate or absolute raging bullsh*t… well. I intend to keep this lot forever.

This isn’t really ‘a year in review’ for a couple of reasons. The main two are obvious: I’ve been pants with the blog, and I haven’t really got a lot to say about my ~achievements~ across the last year. I grew a lot (personally, not height-wise); I feel more settled and like I am slightly better at this adult thing; I went to Japan twice; I moved into Seoul with all these plans… And then none of them really came to fruition. My creative goals all but fell flat.

Two big changes did happen in my life last year, which kind of threw my time management skills for a loop. For those of you who follow me on instagram, Toast isn’t a stranger, but for those who don’t: in April of 2018 I adopted a puppy. He’s a rescue corgi (possibly/probably mixed), and he’s about a year old now. He’s the light of my life, my very best Good Boy, and where my freer time has been spent. Adjusting to life with a puppy has been hard but rewarding, and now that he’s mellowing out and doesn’t need me to entertain him so much any more, I’ve been able to get more work done.

So 2018 was a year of shelving projects, or conceiving projects and then abandoining them. I can’t isolate one sole reason for prettymuch failing all of my creative goals; but it’s likely a combination of tiredness, biting off more than I can chew with my time management, and overwhelm with a dash of lazy perfectionism. Trying to create and manage your life with a full time job, puppy, and social requirements is really kinda hard – kudos to all of you who do it, and give me all your tips please!

I’m happy that 2018 turned into more of a ‘me’ year. I managed to improve my health, got back into the gym and have been more conscious about listening to what my body needs. My relationship with food has also improved so much year, which is a huge step for me.

I’ve been better at keeping myself and my home more organised this year, too. And before anyone who’s been to my place yells bullshit; organised doesn’t have to mean tidy! I have been better at tidying too, but my main thing was wanting to give everything a place and making sure it stuck, which it did. I just wasn’t so happy about being moved around so much (technically three times, although one of them was only temporary) because it felt like I really couldn’t get anything how I wanted it, and by the time I was settled I was looking for places to move to. I’d really love to find an apartment that I love, can live in for more than 6 months, and actually set up how I want to in 2019.

Although I fell off the planning wagon in the beginning of summer, I jumped back on in September and have found a system and a set-up that is working for me. I’ve spent probably way too much money on stationery, but having something that I am excited to add to and look at is important to me. It’s a bullet journal – yes I know everyone is doing that these days – but it is a pretty great way to organise and write down the things that are happening in your life. I love how customisable the system is, even if it did take me nearly 3 years to be consistent in it. I’m enjoying exploring what i want to do each week and month- if that’s something you want to see, give me a nudge. This year is the year I get my shit together.

So i guess my main ‘life’ resolution is to keep doing more of the same. The last few months of 2018 have been some of the happiest of the whole year – even if there have been some incredibly stressful pockets of time within them – and I’d like to keep that going. The actual resolution type things are more or less the same as last year, but hey ho, it’s kinda worked.

Which leaves my creative goals. This year I want to focus on fulfilling some long term blog goals. I’ve had this space for quite a while, not that you could tell, since I’ve been pretty inconsistent. I did do some big things that I wanted to achieve: migrated the blog to wordpress (thanks pipdig); I’m now self hosted; and have started being able to write and create posts so they match what I see in my head. I spent a lot of the early part of 2018 figuring out how I wanted things to look, since the visual representation is important to me… and then not much else happened. I guess it was kind of a trend last year, but everything I did write, I was really proud of. I realised that there’s a large chunk of the content that I want to write/create/release isn’t the immediate type of content. It’s stuff that takes a while to research and put together, but that’s OK, I just need to plan it around the things that are more immediate. Planning!

And that’s it, I guess. I know this new year hype is full of positivity and good energy, but I’m really going to make a concerted effort to keep this going throughout the whole year. I Do Not Want another ‘buffer’ year where I divert my attention from things that make me happy, even if they’re time consuming

[What I’m wearing

It was a warmer day of early winter, I was meeting a fellow content creator-y friend Zahraa for coffee (finally) and a catch up outside of fashion week. Sinsa was the stomping ground we picked, and its commonplace to dress ‘up’ more in that area. So I dug out my wool camel coat, and put it on over a more neutral colour palette: cream and grey with a hint of pink. I really wanted my statement item to be these knee high combat style boots from a Korean brand called LipHop. They were (and still are) one of my favourite purchases of 2018. To round out the black I accessorised with a cute velvet beret, and a darker brown crossbody bag.

Skirt, top, coat, beret: Korean street shops

Boots: liphop

Bag: coupang]