Day 365 - One Year On

As 2018 comes to a close, I realise a year has gone by since I began this blog. I haven’t updated in a long time and I wasn’t great at blogging everything I completed from the list. As I was doing the various activities I was way more absorbed in actually enjoying it, I rarely thought about talking photos or what I was gonna write about. I kept saying to myself I would go back over each completed item and vlog or blog about it, but honestly, it’s a lot of work when I could just be doing the next thing. 

This list, despite the lack of updates, has been so important to me this year, and I have actually worked hard to accomplish it. Some tasks are sort of massive, so they’re still works in progress, and some tasks took an afternoon. Because so many of the items on the list contain multiple parts, I realised I’ve kinda been looking at it the wrong way. My actual goal, is not to complete 101 things, but to complete 1687* things! The list is actually a lot more complicated and longer than I originally thought. I just see it as a bigger challenge, one I’m still committed to doing! 

This year, I fully completed 14 of the 101 things. I’ve made headway on many other larger tasks, and in total completed 226 things. That’s either 13.86%, or 23.71% depending how you look at it. This is so cool to me! If I try to complete 20 things in 2019, and continue working towards some of the massive tasks, by September 2020 I feel like I’ll definitely have this finished. However, because I barely blogged about what I accomplished, I thought I would use this post as an opportunity to take a look back on what I achieved this year.

In the world of traveling, I had an amazing year. I started out by visiting Norway in March, I traveled to Bournemouth with a friend for a week, and in September embarked on a month long interrail trip where I visited 5 new countries including Germany, crossed the France/Germany border on foot, and spent an afternoon wandering the banks of the beautiful blue Danube.

I finally went to a cat cafe when some friends visited Newcastle. I also took another visiting friend to a local museum, which when paired with a museum I visited in Vienna made my total go up to 2. In France I visited a wonderful art gallery, and multiple times this year I sought guidance from tarot readers who helped me immensely.

I learned so many things. I learned to cook lasagna and absolutely fell in love with it, and started cooking ramen for a quick and healthy lunch. I began driving lessons and can confidently say ‘I know how to drive’, however, I haven’t yet passed my test. I spoke Italian in Italy and was understood, which was so cool, but I’m not quite there yet. 

I have developed so much more love for myself and my body, learned to take it slow and care about myself first and foremost. In February I finished chemo, and have been focusing so much on recovery. I started regularly getting acrylic nails, which my bank balance isn’t fond of... I started caring for my skin so much more and have some sort of skincare routine now. My hair, of course, continued to grow. 

I didn’t read any books, which sort of sucks. BUT I did watch 8 new films, several of them considered classics. I sent 95 postcards, and though there has been a lull, I hope to pick this up again! I spent some time digging into my family history and
iscovered I am ancestrally Jewish, which was no surprise. I played a lot of RuneScape but didn’t achieve anything there, lol. 

I finally decorated my living room and my bedroom!! However, I don’t consider either to be finished. There’s still the odd painting job and wallpapering to complete. I started organising my office for good, and hope soon it’ll be complete. In the process of decorating everywhere, purging my belongings has been ongoing and will probably be complete in about 6 months time. 

As you can probably tell already, I had a lot of adventures. I geocached, in 4 countries! I found 41 in total. I played an escape room for my birthday, went indoor/snowless skiing, took someone on a picnic date and played mini golf with my newfound friends. 

I met two of my closest friends for the first time. I had the most incredible experiences with both of them and it brought me closer and made me happier. I love that I get to experience these connections. I subscribed to a sticker subscription pack, and love it. I sent my mum flowers cause she’s awesome. 

If ever I was bored, or felt like I was missing out on opportunities, I would look to my list. I would try to fulfill at least one thing on there. This is honestly one of the best decisions I ever made and I’m thoroughly enjoying accomplishing it.

However, this year has been long, eventful, and brought me closer to myself. I understand my goals and my desires for life so much more. I am recovering and strengthening and learning every day. This means sometimes, goals change. Interests and future plans differ, and some of the things on the list just don’t work anymore. Going into 2019, I’ve decided to make some alterations to the list, nothing drastic, just changes that align with the changes I’m making in my life. 

TRAVEL

• Pet sitting abroad. Honestly, I still would absolutely love to do this. It’s something I hope to do at least once in my life. However this year an addition was made to my family in the form of Nina, my gorgeous cat. She cannot travel with me, and that makes pet sitting, and travel generally, hard. I also am currently in the process of adopting a dog, who I am planning of taking traveling. This will almost definitely be inappropriate for pet sitting. I am removing this goal, very sadly, and replacing it with another super exciting traveling goal, I want to travel somewhere outside of Europe!

LEARNING

• Learn to drive. I am changing this goal to ‘pass my driving test’ cause, I have learned to drive, and realistically, I want to pass my test. Nothing huge. Just word change!

• Become 50% fluent in Italian. This year duolingo changed the way it assessed your fluency of a lanaguage. The percentage system was scrapped in favour of a new ‘crowns’ system. Each topic you complete rewards you with a crown, and you can study the topic up to 5 times, each time growing harder and more difficult to engage with. The wording of this goal must change due to this technical change! There are 66 lessons total. I aim to obtain 132, which means I’ll be at least on level 2 for each lesson. I currently have 54 crowns. 

• Finish DD102 and AA100. I ended up dropping out of both my university modules due to my appalling health this year. As I have recovered, grown, and learned about my interests and passions more, this ultimately was a brilliant decision. I have decided to attempt a degree in international relations, which is fairly different to the degree I was originally studying. For this, I have to go back to college and get pre uni qualifications, so this goal will be changing to Complete an access to HE course. 

SELF CARE

• Get back to 60kg. This was a mistype from the start. I never was 60kg, I was 70kg. I honestly don’t have a goal weight, and I think its unhealthy to strive for a specific weight target goal. I just wanna wear the clothes I used to wear before chemo. Weight doesn't work in the way we all like to think it does, and I'm building a ton of muscle whilst my body is recovering. So, this goal is changing to Fit into my favourite clothes.

HOBBIES

• Send 1000 postcards. When I first began this, multiple people pointed out that 1000 postcards is a LOT of postcards. I truly thought it was realistic. Turns out, it ain't! I am going to cut this goal in half for many reasons but mainly because I want this list to be achivable whilst still challenging.

That’s all for now. I said it wasn’t huge! Just some small changes as I change. I’ll probably reflect on this again later in 2019, I feel a yearly review is good. As I said, I love this list and the experiences it has provided for me and the things I will hopefully be able to do from here onwards. It’s helping me achieve tiny little goals, and contributing towards huge lifelong adventures. 

Thank you for sticking by me even though I didn’t share these experiences. I probably will at some point go into detail, but even if I don’t, know that this blog has been weirdly motivating. 

Milly x 

*Note - with the changes to my list the new 'actual amount' is 953, not 1687