About 2018 and planning for 2019

I hope you have had a wonderful Christmas and holiday season. I assume that most of you are back at work by now? I took a couple of weeks off during the holidays, but have been working for a week now. It has been hard, to say the least. You are used to sleep at least nine hours every night, walk around in your PJs all day, and just be with your partner all the time ♥ Now you have to get up early, get dressed and K is not around so my days are rather long and boring, even though I have work to do.

Being on vacation like this, you realize how important it is to take some time off and focus on other things than work. This is something I’ve become much better at during 2018. I absolutely love my job and I love to create, but it’s still my job and if I don’t take some time off every now and then, I’ll get stressed and eventually burned-out. I’ve already been there once, and I certainly don’t want to experience that again.

So, even though the first week after my vacation was a bit hard due to less sleep and more routines, I feel like I’m back with more energy and ideas. I’m ready for a new year! But before we kick-start 2019, I’d like to go back in time and see what happened 2018. Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?

January was filled with both happy and sad moments. We spent a couple of weeks in Indonesia (Bali) and ate lots of yummy plant-based food, visited rice terraces, an elephant sanctuary, a monkey forest and spent hours relaxing and exploring. Bali did indeed become one of my favorite places in the world – such an amazing place.

In January, my aunt passed away, which was very hard and I still can’t understand that she’s gone.

So, the year started out with mixed feelings – the happiness of traveling and the enormous sadness of losing someone you love ♥

February was, as always, filled with birthday celebrations, since both me and K are born in February. This year K turned 30, so we had a little birthday party to celebrate this. As a gift, I had booked a trip to the Swedish island Gotland for the two of us, just in time for our 7th anniversary (later in 2018).

March and april was mostly filled with work, but by the end of April it was time to leave Stockholm and head to Gotland for that birthday trip. We stayed at a hotel in Visby, the biggest city on the island, but I had rented a car so that we could explore the rest of the island as well. It was a few days well spent, indeed.

Then, all of a sudden it was spring, the trees started to bloom, and we went to a Lord of the Rings-inspired wedding. I continued to work quite a lot, and before I knew it it was summer. It was also around this time that we found out that I was pregnant, which was the best thing that happened during 2018 (yes, the baby was planned) ♥

I was nauseous for a couple of months and since we had the hottest summer ever noticed in Sweden, I had a pretty hard time, hehe. To be honest, I spent most of the time on our couch, trying not to throw up…

Between May and August the sun was shining every single day, and we had 40°C in our apartment and 35°C outdoors. It didn’t rain at all and to get away from the heat we spent almost our entire summer vacation in the countryside. Since it was so hot and it didn’t rain, our well dried out so we had no water, which was an interesting experience, to say the least. Even the lake started to dry out, something that had never happened before. It was a weird summer, but spending it in the countryside by the lake was the best thing we could do.

Then it was time to go back to work and by this time my nausea had disappeared and I felt like myself again. The autumn months passed by in what felt like a second, like they usually do. I worked a lot and my belly grew. We found out that we were expecting a baby boy and we started to prepare for our new little family member. We traveled a little in Sweden and visited friends and family, but mostly it was work + chill weekends at home.

In December we met a lot of friends and family and visited those who live far away. We also prepared for Christmas, which we celebrated at home together with my mum. During our vacation we played a lot of board games, had friends over for dinner, prepared the last things for the baby, and just enjoyed life. And before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye to 2018 and welcome to 2019.

What I learned in 2018:

• How good yoga and meditation makes me feel

• The importance of taking time off from work, which can be hard as a blogger/freelancer

• Say no to work related things/projects that don’t feel right

• A lot of pregnancy and baby related stuff of course

• I became better at running a business

• To use my phone less, which made such a big difference

• To do the work – less procrastination and more “just do it”

Goals for 2019

The baby

I’ll dedicate most of my time to taking care of the little fella that will join us very soon. Learning how to be a mom, taking care of him, making sure that he grows and feels well. I think our days (and nights) will be rather busy. Making sure my little family feels good is my number one priority during 2019 (and the years to come, hehe).

Health

I’ve been feeling very well during my pregnancy. I still workout every day, I have no pain (not even swollen feet) and I’m amazed by my body and how it’s handling the pregnancy. I’m so grateful for this and I want to give something back once the baby is here. And giving back means taking care of my body – well, continue to take care of my body. I’ll eat healthy foods, keep up my yoga practice and once the body has healed, I’ll start running again (I miss that so much). I know that for a lot of women, pregnancy is hard and that’s why I’m so thankful for how well my body has handled this for me.

I’ve been meditating a lot during my pregnancy and that’s something I plan on keep doing even afterwards. It makes me feel so relaxed and connected to myself. It feels like meditation and yoga are very much connected and doing both really helps me to feel good. And since I can do both from home, it’ll work great with a baby as well.

Life

During 2018 I created boundaries for myself when it comes to social media/Internet/screen time. I stopped scrolling through Instagram just before bedtime, and I didn’t touch my phone for the first two hours after waking up. Most days at least. It made such a huge difference and I plan on keeping this habit in 2019.

In fact, I want to take it one step further and spend even less time on my phone. But my business is centered around social media and the Internet? Yes, it is. But that doesn’t mean I have to spend more hours than neccessary on these platforms, right? Of course not. Do the work and then put the phone away. I think most of us spend way too much time on our phones and I want to get rid of that habit. On iPhones you can now track your screen time so it’s super easy to see exactly how much time you spend on your phone and on what. Love that feature!

Instead of wasting my time on my phone, I want to read more books, listen to more music, play more board games, meditate more – simply be more present. This might sound pretentious to some, but I just don’t want to waste my time on things that don’t add much value to my life.

Another thing that we’ll do this year is keep looking for a house. We started out during 2018 and we’ve decided on a few areas that we find interesting so this year we’ll keep on looking and hope that we can find our dream house ♥

Business

My goal is to do what feels right when it comes to the blog and my business. I will keep the blog and the business alive for sure. Exactly how much I’ll be able to do the future will tell, hehe. Like I said, the baby will be my number one priority (ofc), but I’ll try my best to keep the blog up to date with new recipes and stories from my life. When it comes to freelance work I’ll simply go with the flow and work as much as feels good. Go with the flow and be present – my two mottos for 2019 maybe? 🙂

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