Well hello. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?
It was a little surprising a couple of weeks ago when I realized I hadn’t posted anything since August. I’m not exactly sure what happened; my own best guess is that I wore myself out after last April’s blast of writing for National Decorating Month, and it just became habit to do other things with what was normally my writing time.
Especially all those videos. I’m not exactly what you’d call an expert at making them, so they probably take a lot longer than they should!
For a while, it was a source of guilt in my mind, but I don’t mind it so much now. It’s given me time to think back on what happened over the course of the last year; having to bounce back from working for someone who completely distrusts you for no reason at all, relearning skills I didn’t realize I’d lost along the way, figuring out how exactly to fit into a new role at work.
The biggest thing, though, has been relearning how to place value in my own work and what I know I can do, rather than feeling like I need validation from an outside source.
But now I’m back, and with 2022 behind me, let me tell you what’s been going on so far this year!
It’s been a time, let me tell you.
Let’s start in November 2022. Months before, Shane and I had talked about taking time over the Christmas holidays to finally take our honeymoon. After all, it hadn’t exactly been feasible after we got married in 2021!
We had originally wanted to try and head overseas, but between crazy price fluctuations and layover locations we weren’t exactly keen on, we ended up choosing a lovely-looking beach resort in Mexico to be our temporary home over New Year’s.
At first, it was great! Traveling there went without a hitch, our room was the stuff of Instagram dreams, and even the first meals we had there were delightful. But of course, it wouldn’t really be me if there weren’t some unpredictable situations.
You know, like getting caught in what ended up being the hotel equivalent of a timeshare presentation, because that’s totally something that always happens on vacation, right?
Or like frying your phone accidentally so you didn’t have access to any of your travel information while in another country.
Despite that, though, we had a wonderful first few days enjoying the sun, the sea, and the unlimited beverages.
But then things started going downhill.
We woke up on New Year’s Day after a very enthusiastic celebration with what we thought were hangovers. But when they didn’t clear up, and started turning into scary things like a total inability to breathe on my part and weird pains for Shane, we ended up deciding it would be better to head home early.
We took every precaution to get home safely and as quickly as we could, and it turns out it was probably for the best. As of now, I still haven’t completely recovered!
The return trip wasn’t without its own excitement, though–because when we landed in Toronto at two in the morning, we got back to my car just to realize that the battery had died and we had to tow it a good 150 km home. That was an expensive battery, let me tell you.
On the plus side, though, our quick escape from Mexico ended up getting us home before the situation with the cartels in Sinaloa broke out–originally, we weren’t scheduled to come home until two days after that. Silver lining.
Now, I’m hoping things are looking up.
I very much believe in luck, and have decided that with everything that’s happened so far this year, I’ve used up the majority of my bad luck. So there’s only good things from here on out.
That’s how it works, right?
