2018 was a rough year for us. We knew it would be different from past years, but we had no idea how much.

We started off the year in the middle of Will’s visa application, which meant that he couldn’t work yet. So with only one income, travelling went on the back burner, only making small trips locally. And than, later in the year my life was turned upside down when my dad, my favourite person in the entire world, was diagnosed with brain cancer. My world stopped spinning and everything I thought we’d achieve in 2018 got put on hold. Our priorities changed and we pretty much stopped travelling.

It really was one of the hardest years but it did bring good things too. I grew so much closer to my mum, and I’m so thankful for that; we were able to visit family in Vancouver and spend time with my brother, something I rarely get to do; we just happened to be lucky enough to have close friends from England move to Canada and end up living close by; we took spontaneous road trips with said friends, and we’re so grateful that they were close by because I think the year would have been 10x suckier if we didn’t have them around; and Will’s visa came through (!) making him a Permanent Resident.

We came out of 2018 with gratitude for everything and if we learnt anything from this year it is this:

Life is short, too short not to spend time doing things that make you happy, things you enjoy or things you want to do or wish to do. We really have very little time in this life and yes, you can’t always be doing whatever you want, because it’s not always feasible  but you can try harder to make time for them. And that is what were aiming for this year. To make more quality time for our people, to do more of the things that we want to do, to not make excuses to not do them, and spend more time doing things that we enjoy . Life is too short to waste any time.

So we’ve put together a list of things we want to focus on this year to improve ourselves and make this year a better one then the last. We want to look back at the end of the year and think, ‘We did good this year, we’re proud of ourselves‘ and not ‘Well that was a wasted year of my life‘

Spend more time looking at the stars than looking at our phones

Blog more consistently

Improve our photography

Create more videos (regardless of how short or crappy we think they are)

Spend more quality time with friends and family

Travel Bali more extensively

Be fully plant based by the end of the year

Go diving again

Watch more sunrises

Go back to England

Read more

Spend more time at the Gym (who doesn’t have this on their list)

Start doing yoga again (B)

Take up a new hobby/ try something new