I don't know about you, but I feel tired as 2020 ends. And although I wanted to write a year-in-review post this year, I just didn't have the energy to do so. Until I saw Leonie Dawson's post about 100 she did, made and loved in 2020 and was inspired. Writing a list of things that happened in the last year is so much easier than writing a coherent story about the year! Plus it's kind of symbolic of how I see life these days, as a combination of small and big things, with both being important. So that if something big falls through I still have some small things to focus on, not everything is lost.

I didn't quite get to 100 so 59 things will have to do.  I have some serious plans for keeping better track of things in 2021 though, so hopefully I'll manage to remember 100 things about next year!

1. Rang in the New Year with my bonus family in Wales - we had dinner at an all-you-can-eat world buffet place in Cardiff Bay and had a great time. Little did we know that that was the only time we'd get to see each other all year!

2. Read 29 books - I'll probably make it to 30 but my goal was 50! I feel like I should have read a lot more given that I was home all the time! See my favorite books of the year here.

3. Bought a Roidmi vaccuum cleaner when lockdown started and our cleaner couldn't come anymore. It was one of the best purchases I ever made. Sad but true.

4. Drove across Germany and Poland to see my parents in July - I'm sooooo happy that we stayed with them for 3 weeks as it was the only time this year that we got to see them. We played a lot of table tennis and pool. And ate a lot of yummy Polish food.

5. Sold our house - twice. The first time fell through, but we're ending the year having accepted another offer and cautiously confident that it'll happen this time.

6. Tried to avoid fixing a crumbling wall in our garden - but in the end decided that energetically it was better to get it fixed, even though the cost was astronomical. Interestingly, as soon as this decision was made our selling/moving plans progressed immediately. Proof that everything is connected in ways we don't always understand!

7. Spent a lot of time looking at houses in Galway.... maybe some of them will still be on the market when we move in summer of 2021?

8. Made a Polish Christmas herring dish with my Mom over Facetime. It was one of my favorite moments with her ever. And the herring turned out great, just like hers always does!

9. Dealt with several bouts of depression and high anxiety - sometimes at the same time, going from crying to panic attack and back again. It was not an easy year mental-health-wise, but I understand that I needed to go deep into my emotions this year. I hope that this lesson is now done!

10. Listened to The Surrender Experiment on Audible - it was the first audiobook that held my attention for a very long time. Such inspiration to let go and let life flow through you. I end up recommending this book to pretty much everyone I talk to, because everyone seems to have this problem of trying to make things happen and resisting what life gives them... maybe you need to listen to it too?

11. Started listening to Becoming by Michelle Obama. I'm not done yet so can't count towards this year's reading, but am loving it. Especially her description of how she met Barack, who was an intern at the law firm she was working at!

12. Finally ran a class on parallel realities - I've been experimenting with the concepts of quantum mechanics for years, and have had amazing results. I finally put everything I know into a class. I was so surprised to find that loads of people were open to and interested in this strange topic!

13. Dabbled in homeschooling during lockdown and our family considered it for the coming school year. We didn't choose it in the end, but thinking about our education choices was a really interesting exercise. We talked to our son about the education system, why it exists and why it is the way it is. I feel like this was a really valuable conversation to have, even if he/we decided to stay in the system for now.

14. Loved loved loved having my son and husband home so much this year! It was great to be together in this way, for sure one of the main gifts of lockdown.

15. Bought sooooo many board games when we were anticipating lockdown. I imagined we'd have loads of time to play, but as it turned out some of them are still untouched. I guess I forgot about work and doing all our own cleaning and cooking. And the disinfecting of everything that came into our home, which I only stopped doing in the summer.

16. Started an exercise regime when I found Les Mills on-demand classes. When I was younger, I used to be obsessed with a class called Body Pump at my local gym. Turns out that this is a super popular weight training class run by a company called Les Mills - and that they have lots of other great classes, too. I'm working out 2-3 times a week now and it looks like I finally found something that I won't get bored with. Yay!

17.  Spent way too much time disinfecting groceries and anything else that came into our home. When lockdowns started everything felt so dangerous... I'm happy that they learned more about the virus along the way and that it turned out that I could stop disinfecting what I bought. At one point I wondered if that's what life would be like from now on!

18. Got serious about my blog, hired a blogging coach, learned SEO and started writing. My blog post on questions to ask oracle cards hit number 1 on google very quickly and still ranks first. I'm so insanely proud of this small accomplishment, it feels like a giant step forward.

19. Started treating walks in the park as a social activity to do with friends. Whereas before we'd meet for coffee or lunch, this year it was difficult to meet indoors so we went for walks. I'd like to keep this habit - it meant that I got out into the fresh air a lot more and that social occasions didn't necessarily mean food!

20. Ran two rounds of my Visioning Quest, one at Bealtaine on May 1 and one at Samhain on November 1. I'm running another round of it at the beginning of January, with a focus on finding your soul's word of the year. The Visioning Quest is based on intuitive vision boarding, and brings you tons of insight as it puts you in touch with your soul and your path of highest potential. I loved running this more regularly in 2020, as it's been such a huge part of my own journey from the very start.  

21. Became more vocal/open about my channelling - I did readings by channelling goddess Brighid, the Faeries, and my own guide team Avalon. I also incorporated my channeling into pretty much everything I did. If this intrigues you, you can sign up for monthly and/or weekly channelled guidance here.

22. Learned to dye my own hair.

23. Realised that my hair is so much nicer now that I don't go to the hairdresser's... it's getting a bit long, and I'll probably need to go get it trimmed when things open up again, but I certainly will never again get it 'styled'. Love my new natural long hair!

24. Bought like 20 cookbooks. Anyone else better at buying cookbooks than cooking from them?? LOL

25. Enjoyed my son and husband doing musical projects together. Enjoy their rendition of the song Havana here. 

26. Had gazillions of arguments about screen time limits. But then, social contact was only possible through the iPad a lot of the time so it's probably ok. 

27. Bought a gazebo-tent-type-structure for the garden, as well as garden furniture. After 10 years in this house and on the verge of moving out, I finally made an effort to make the patio a nice place to hang out. This was thanks to lockdown, we were spending so much time at home that it seemed like a good idea to do up the patio!

28. Discovered a local place that delivers beautiful vegetables and ordered from them every single week. Had to keep our immunity up!

29. Had a Lebanese feast on my 44th birthday.

30. Made great progress on writing my book - but didn't finish it like I wanted. This has required a lot of self-kindness, compassion and forgiveness.

31. Loved using my Happy Planner to not just plan but also document daily life. It's my absolutely favorite planning/scrapbooking system in the world. You can check it out on Amazon or, if you're in Europe, Craftelier is better.

32. Ah yes, bought a mini photo printer to support my Happy Planner scrapbooking. I'd forgotten about it actually but really want to use it more!

33. Ran several channelled calls, a book club, and a SoulSmart Advent Calendar for soulsmart patrons.

34. Joined Elizabeth Goddard's Profitable Playground programme and made giant leaps in my business.

35. Signed up for this million dollar experiment - as you can see, I have high hopes for 2021 🙂

36. Decided to stay in Belgium for Christmas, which makes me really sad because it's the first time in my life that I'm spending the holidays without my parents but I know that it's the right thing to do.

37. Had daily coffee with my husband - it was so wonderful to have this regular time to sit down and talk to each other! Definitely a habit to be continued.

38. Watched my husband organise several lockdown musical projects. See this video and this one of you like magical, emotive music.

39. Started watching non-cartoon movies with my 10yo. We loved Back To The Future, Murder On The Orient Express and Freaky Friday.

40. Watched a whole lot of Christmas movies. Favorites included the epic Elf, as well as The Christmas Chronicles and Noelle.

41. Wrote an epic blog post about how to use oracle cards. And another on my favorite oracle card decks.

42. Recorded 12 episodes of The SoulSmart Podcast. Not a whole lot, but still.

43. Got to interview Leonie Dawson! She is such an inspiration to me.

44. Saw one of my best friends move to Japan.

45. Discovered overnight oats for breakfast. My favorite recipe is this one.

46. Made a lot of jigsaw puzzles. I think I always had one going. There were times during the year when all I could really do was a jigsaw puzzle, everything else was too much. 

47. Discovered the joys of Spotify playlists. I was always an iTunes girl but this is so much better! 

48. Ran a purely channelled training - on the Energetic Foundations of Money and Wealth.

49. Accidentally told my 10yo the truth about Santa.

50. Received monthly subscription boxes of beauty products (from LookFantastic UK). It was so fun to get a present in the mail every month! I've cancelled it for now because my address will be changing this year, but I'l definitely sign up again. Maybe also for a stationery or creativity subscription box... then I'd get TWO presents every month!

51. Sold my car in the most magical way - the battery died and we called someone to come out and help us start it. They came and bought the car, immediately taking away a problem we weren't sure what to do with. Thanks, universe!

52. Suffered through the first time I wasn't able to take away my son's pain - beginning of orthodontic treatment. He was really brave and I really was not.

53. Celebrated my birthday by going for a walk my 3 friends - we were allowed to be 4 people together outside at the time.

54. Bought giant lego set to build with my son - I'd always wanted one of the 16+ sets and have been waiting for an opportunity to justify the expense. 2020 was definitely it!

55. Watched Schitt's Creek and loved it. Also, Dash and Lily. And Superstore.

56. Rewatched most of Buffy and Angel. Stopped when things got reaaaaally dark. I just wasn't in the mood for doom and gloom on the tv, there was enough of that in real life this year!

57. Signed up to Disney+ so we could watch Hamilton but haven't yet. We've watched lots of cheesy Disney movies though!

58. Ordered a box of Polish books that I loved as a child... something about this year made me nostalgic for sure.

59. Learned to go with the flow and trust the universe... not completely and not always, I had plenty of times when I lost hope and slid into despair. But somehow I kept getting up again, finding that there was no choice but to keep going and if I was to keep going then I might as well trust that it will all be ok. I guess 2021 will let me know soon enough!

How was YOUR 2020? If you're not sure how to answer that, I recommend getting a piece of paper and jotting down some bullet points. You may be surprised at what you remember as significant!

Love,