Recap: 2018 Edition

My 2018 was a.…… roller coast­er, that’s for sure. This time last year, I had no idea my life would turn out the way it did but I am a firm believ­er in every­thing hap­pen­ing for a reason.

I got to go on a ton of fun trips, I read some real­ly great books, and I worked on achiev­ing the goals I set at the very begin­ning of this year. It seems way longer than 365 days but there are some years that flash by quick­ly and oth­ers that go slowly.

Experiences

-Camp FI SE 2018: I went back to Flori­da for my sec­ond Camp FI SE and loved it. I reunit­ed with amaz­ing peo­ple from the pre­vi­ous year and made new friends while enjoy­ing time at a beau­ti­ful camp. Click the link above to read more about that trip!

-Quit­ting my job & Mov­ing to Min­neso­ta: Even though this did­n’t work out at all like I thought, I still con­sid­er it a high­light. I changed up my entire life and it felt insane­ly lib­er­at­ing! At least until every­thing fell apart lat­er haha. I am so glad I took the chance on a new life. I learned a lot about myself and the world around me in the 9 or so months I lived in Minneapolis.

-STATEMENT 2018: At the begin­ning of May, I attend­ed 2 day retreat in Upstate New York with some crazy smart, ded­i­cat­ed, tal­ent­ed women entre­pre­neurs. Any suc­cess I had this year can pret­ty much be traced back to that week­end and our sub­se­quent biweek­ly Mas­ter­mind meet­ings. They are a won­der­ful­ly sup­port­ive group of ladies and I’m so glad I got the invite to go.

-Camp Mus­tache 2018: I went back for my sec­ond Camp Mus­tache in Seat­tle at the end of May. I got to hang out with my pod­cast cohost J before and after the retreat which is always a good time. We record­ed a few episodes for the pod­cast (which turned out GREAT!) and had fun talk­ing to like-mind­ed peo­ple all week­end. I enjoyed the week­end and DID NOT climb Mt. Si again. Once was enough for this flat-lander.

-PM18: At the end of July, I decid­ed to attend Pod­cast Move­ment which was a 10/10 deci­sion. I met a lot of cool pod­cast­ers, learned a ton, snagged an epic mic set­up in a rock/paper/scissors con­test, and prob­a­bly had a lit­tle bit too much fun singing karaōke at 2 am. Philadel­phia is a neat city and I’m look­ing for­ward to going back to explore it in more depth sometime!

-Sell­ing my rental prop­er­ty: My rental prop­er­ty did not con­tribute much of any­thing towards my goal of increased hap­pi­ness (and in fact con­tributed a lot of stress and anx­i­ety), so I sold it off before it ruined me. Thank­ful­ly, I was able to get rid of it fair­ly quick­ly and was able to recoup some of my mon­ey. Some, not all. Sigh. I def­i­nite­ly learned a lot in this area, though! I don’t want to be a solo land­lord again on a rental, but I will prob­a­bly invest in Real Estate again in some capac­i­ty. Far, far in the future. I don’t see that in the cards for 2019!

-Dis­ney: After Fin­Con, a bunch of us pooled some cash and went in on a trip to Walt Dis­ney World. I had­n’t been to Dis­ney before, so it was a dream come true. Most­ly. It was fun­ny how being a con­scious con­sumer and aspir­ing min­i­mal­ist affect­ed my spend­ing habits. I bought some treats for fam­i­ly and a set of pins. That was all I felt inclined to take home with me as sou­venirs. I did, how­ev­er, eat what­ev­er I felt like at the parks and had some amaz­ing foods. I’m not sure what lev­el of pou­tine is too much to eat in a few days but we did not hit that lim­it. Noms.

-Mov­ing to DC: Get­ting a good job, find­ing an awe­some place to live and mov­ing to DC is a fan­tas­tic way to round up my 2018. I am grate­ful I was able to hop back into the world of work again rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly. I’m not going to lie, the peo­ple in the DC area FI com­mu­ni­ty were a strong rea­son to move to DC. The com­mu­ni­ty is hard at work mak­ing me feel wel­come and it’s work­ing! I’m thrilled I can just move here and with­in 2 weeks have din­ner plans and things to do on New Year’s Eve. I would real­ly be strug­gling in a new place with­out the won­der­ful peo­ple here!

Books

I was­n’t quite the pro­lif­ic read­er this year as I’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly been, but I did man­age to squeeze in some good books in 2018. They include:

-The Hap­pi­ness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I read this book in sun­ny beau­ti­ful LA after bor­row­ing it from the WoW’s while vis­it­ing them. It was real­ly inter­est­ing to see the changes she made to her life, and she def­i­nite­ly inspired me make some changes and track the results.

-Any­thing by Tamo­ra Pierce. I’m pret­ty sure I read all of her books this year (some mul­ti­ple times) but I real­ly liked her newest book, Tem­pests and Slaugh­ter. The high­light of her books was see­ing her in per­son at a con as she read us a short sto­ry from MY copy of HER BOOK. Safe to say, LIFE MADE. She was awe­some and I hope she con­tin­ues to write for many years to come.

-The Pow­er of Broke by Day­mond John. I read this book short­ly after quit­ting my job and becom­ing a full-time entre­pre­neur. I took it to heart but no mat­ter how much I hus­tled, it did­n’t make a dif­fer­ence this time around. I high­ly rec­om­mend any­one think­ing of going on their own to read this book before you do. It’s inspir­ing, for sure!

-Muir­wood series by Jeff Wheel­er. If you like the fan­ta­sy genre of fic­tion, you will love this series. I think I pow­ered through all of the books in the span of about a week. They are real­ly good books!

-The Art of Ask­ing by Aman­da Palmer. A seri­ous­ly fan­tas­tic book that will leave you feel­ing raw and excit­ed about life. I real­ized I’ve done a bit of what she’s done, but there is a lot more room for me to grow and scale my efforts. I can do this by shar­ing more and giv­ing more. What comes around, goes around and I want the things com­ing my way to be good things.

I’m sure there are more books, but those are the ones that stand out to me when I look back over the year.

Goals from 2018: The Year of Being

As is my usu­al, I assign an over­all theme to the new year. 2018 was The Year of Being, which now that I look back on it sounds a lit­tle pre­ten­tious. I’m not stop­ping now though! I looked back over the post and will see how I did on my goals.

Be Hap­py: I feel like I did and did­n’t achieve this goal. I guess it depends on what part of the year you’re look­ing at. The first half of the year was pret­ty great, but between my rela­tion­ship, the stress of free­lanc­ing, and deal­ing with the Din­gle House, my hap­pi­ness took a sharp nose­dive and only grad­u­al­ly returned towards the end of the year. Read­ing the Hap­pi­ness Project was very insight­ful in this process.

Be Healthy: I’d give myself an over­all pass on this one. I start­ed bik­ing and walk­ing more when I lived in Min­neapo­lis which def­i­nite­ly made me feel health­i­er. I also start­ed eat­ing health­i­er with the addi­tion of smooth­ies and tak­ing out some red meats. I don’t think I drank any less though. Maybe I should track that in 2019.…

Be Kind: I def­i­nite­ly tried to redi­rect my humor away from the peo­ple around me. This was some­thing I very much want­ed to fix and after a while I did­n’t have to think about it any­more. Some­times it would flare up when I found myself in old envi­ron­ments or in stress­ful sit­u­a­tions, but over­all: PASS!

Be thought­ful: I’d say this one could use a bit more work. It seems like every time I tried to sit down and be more delib­er­ate about things, the more they fell apart. I’d like to learn how to plan and plot for the future more. I suck at set­ting goals and fig­ur­ing out how to achieve them. My friends all have clear visions on what they want their projects or work to accom­plish and I’m over here just enjoy­ing the process. I’m not say­ing one way is bet­ter than the oth­er, but maybe there’s some­thing I can learn from them and vice versa.

Be Moti­vat­ed: FAIL. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but it was real­ly hard and is real­ly hard to moti­vate myself to do any­thing. I have a num­ber of sus­pi­cions about why that is, but I intend to talk to some­one about it in a few ther­a­py ses­sions. I had the chance of a life­time to go out on my own and I could­n’t make it work and I’d like to fig­ure out why that was.

Be Present: In today’s world, tech­nol­o­gy can be a crutch for avoid­ing peo­ple or stress­ful sit­u­a­tions. I did make more of an effort to put the tech­nol­o­gy down and focus more on life as it hap­pened. There were def­i­nite­ly times when I used my phone to avoid talk­ing to peo­ple and I should­n’t have, so I’ll give myself a neu­tral on this one. Always room for improvement!

Work: I want­ed to break even, get some speak­ing gigs and get some free­lance writ­ing gigs. I did not break even and I did not get any speak­ing gigs. I did get some free­lanc­ing gigs, but they were ulti­mate­ly not suc­cess­ful due to chaos swirling around in my life. These goals get a big fat FAIL. It turns out I do bet­ter work for peo­ple under the strict struc­ture of cor­po­rate work life and that’s ok. It was­n’t the best of expe­ri­ences but it cer­tain­ly was eye-opening.

Finances

Iron­i­cal­ly enough, I don’t real­ly want to talk about finances. It would require a lot of time and effort to dig through the fail­ings of my finances in 2018 and I don’t real­ly want to do it and be remind­ed of all the hard feel­ings. So, I will start fresh in 2019. I haven’t done any net worth updates late­ly because of the afore­men­tioned feel­ings, but I will be bring­ing them back in 2019. Nev­er fear, finan­cial voyeurs, I will share them again.

Just not now 🙂

Year in Review

I look back on the last 365 days and I see it for what it was. I had some great times, I had a lot of good times, I had some bad times and a fair amount of stress­ful times. Over­all, I’m grate­ful it all hap­pened. I have a lot of fond mem­o­ries (and some painful ones too) and I’ve learned a lot of incred­i­bly valu­able lessons. I’ve learned what I like, what I don’t like, what I need, and where I thrive. I’m warm, I’m fed, I’m sur­round­ed by peo­ple who care deeply about me, I’ve got a cute cat, and I walked away from 9 months of self-employ­ment with­out drown­ing in debt.

I am blessed.

I wish all of my read­ers a won­der­ful and bright 2019 full of good cheer, good food, and good com­pa­ny. Best wish­es, every­one! May 2019 be your best year yet!

Thanks for read­ing! How was your 2018? What were some high­lights of your year? Sound off in the com­ments below!