Ahh, 2019. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry – as a writer might say, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Unlike 2018, which was more joy and light and laughter until April and then pure agony from June, 2019 was a mixed bag across the year. It was quite hard to think about a 2019 Review.
However, every year I sit down and decide my goals and resolutions for the year. Looking back to the start of 2019, I realise for the first year in a very long time I had none. Between back problems and work stress, even living in a beautiful small and picturesque Italian village couldn’t tear me away to decide on what I wanted from life that year, and that’s just a small part of why I resigned from my job a couple of months into the year.
This year, I’m not making that same mistake. Without discussing 2020 in any great detail, I’ve just finished my resolutions for the year ahead. Yes, I know it’s already February and 10% of the year is already gone! But in my defence I spend most of January stuck up a mountain in the Andes, and that’s why goals are important. Turn a blind eye and before you know it the year, the decade, and your life have stormed past.
While 2018 was the year I lost myself in the valleys and 2020 I hope will be the year I find myself again hitting those mountain peaks (both literally and figuratively), 2019 was part of the climb on the way up.
This is my 2019 review…
Travelling
Looking out over Madeira from one of its highest points
No 2019 Review would be complete without discussing travel, probably the lifeblood of my life. I really enjoyed my travelling in 2019, and if I had to call it one word, it would be pleasant. There were no drunken forays tubing down rivers in Laos, no culture shocks in Japan, no close encounters with kangaroos in Australia, and no getting arrested by the police in Texas.
I still managed to get out on 9 holidays of some sort or the other, not including my trip to Aconcagua that began on 27th December which will be part of 2020’s Review. Sorry about that cliffhanger – you’ll have to wait another year for that.
Outside of Europe, my only stop this year was ten days in Boston. I went to a travel conference and hung out in town till British Airways decided to eventually let me go home after one delay and one plane cancellation. The massive upside to this was BA compensation which paid for the entire trip and more – flights, conference, accommodation and all my spending money.
Madeira was another destination that I remember vividly from 2019. It’s an island owned by Portugal but feels like a different continent. It had blemishes of Europe, dabbled with vegetation straight out of Africa and Asia, and a weather system that could change from damp heat to sunshine to pouring rain over the space of twenty kilometres. I highly recommend it – if you are looking for inspiration, check out my guide to the 20 best things to do in Madeira. Watching the sunset rise over Pico do Areeiro and then walking to Pico Riuvo will stay in my mind forever.
Elsewhere, skiing and walking remained firm favourites on my trips. I took two ski holidays heading to Champoluc and La Thuile in Italy, and another half ski, half road trip across Europe to get home from Italy. I did my first ski from Sestriere in Italy to Montgenevre in France that I’ve always wanted to do when I visited the Susa valley, and also saw Bourges city in France.
In England I had a week in Cornwall (£300), almost a week Winter walking in the Lake District (£200) and a few days hiking the Norfolk Coast (£100), all of which goes to show you that holidays do not have to come at a high price. That’s the great thing I love about walking – all you need is a good pair of boots, and the rest – more or less – is free.
Finally, in Summer I spent a few weeks in Italy, naturally gravitating back to the place that feels more like home at times than the U.K does. I saw Venice for the umpteenth time, but managed to explore its quieter areas. I also admired Trento, a forgotten tourist town on the way from Verona to Bolzano, and spent a few days on my beloved Lake Garda.
10 countries is 10 countries, and I’m grateful for all the incredible journeys and memories along the way. Yet in my 2019 travels, not a single one was new to me. Over the next few years, my goals will be towards bigger achievements and new countries – I feel like I’ve got too complacent in my “old age”.
Blogging
Networking at Travelcon Conference in Boston, June 2019
2018 was a false start for my blogging goals. After years of dreaming of travel writing, I finally put aside time to do it. I booked myself up for a Travel Conference to network and learn skills, and then my back left me in agony in bed. I managed to work through Summer and have a two month vacation in the States, but sitting and typing left me in agony. I tried lying on the floor – same thing. To be honest, I should have just bought myself a standing desk. Maybe I would have been able to at least make some progress. I started on a website design, and stopped.
Coming back to it in 2019, I decided to rejuvenate my efforts. By the middle of the year, I could sit down for a few hours. I still had pain, but it was controllable. I visited two conferences – Travelcon in Boston and Traverse in Italy. I still had imposter syndrome but it was a start. Take it from me: conferences are less daunting when you’re not popping top strength Codeine every two hours and 80% of your brain isn’t dealing just with regulating the pain.
In September I found myself a co-working space for three months, and worked my proverbial butt off. I launched the website you’re looking at on October 21st 2019 with 9 blog posts written and published. There was no big fanfare, but it was an accomplishment for me. The next day, the website had 268 page views and I was ecstatic.
Two days after launch my laptop broke with a major motherboard issue that took a month to have fixed and returned to me. Alongside this, my Dad was in hospital and I was visiting daily.
Blogging slipped to the back of my mind. Now it’s 2020, I have a whole load of goals for the blog, which you can see it my 2020 Resolutions post.
In 2012 I should have started a website when I wanted to, but I’m delighted that even though it’s taken nine years, that dream is now finally realised.
Festivals
The Team at Outlook and Dimensions Fesitval in Croatia (September 2019)
Seven years ago I volunteered at my first festival on the sunny coastline of Cornwall. Little did I know that it would become a big part of my year, or that I would make a business out of it. This year was an interesting year for me – 8 festivals in total across a short span of July and August.
I took a trip back to NASS, the music, skating and BMX festival to run their Eco Bond Recycling. It’s not a festival I overly relate to but the people watching is fabulous. 50% of their audience are 17-18 years old which makes for some baffling fashion choices and even crazier teenage temper tantrums. Then onto Latitude and Wilderness volunteering my time and pay for Oxfam Festivals. Latitude is a little too commercial for some but has always been a firm favourite for me – watching Sigrid live for the first time and Chvrches for the third was my best evening of any Summer Festival this year. Plus, I got to drive around in a buggy giving staff tea and coffee (which they love) and PPE and radio batteries (which they don’t love as much). Even with one of the wettest overnight shifts in memory, it was a blast. At Wilderness I sat in a control box, which was slow, but it was my first time in the beautiful Cornbury park in Oxfordshire. Wilderness is the poshest and barmiest (say it with a upper class accent) festival I’ve ever seen – you can read about it here.
My favourite festival Boardmasters, in a bizarre turn of events, was cancelled at 11pm the night before gate opening. It was to be my biggest contract of the season, looking after a team of 85 strong to run part of the festival’s sustainability program and to help with their gate opening. It was the most surreal few days from arriving onsite Monday, getting half our 85 strong team onsite Tuesday, and saying goodbye to them all Wednesday. Half of them went and partied at Boomtown festival instead that weekend, which at least makes me feel it wasn’t a wasted effort on their part.
Then August saw a lovely end to U.K Festival season looking after the main gate at We Out Here, a festival in its very first year set on the old Secret Garden Party site, and chilling out at Shambala looking after their Recycling Exchange with a team of experience My Cause volunteers and managers.
Then, in an unusual change of pace, flew to Croatia to help out on the last ever Outlook and Dimensions Festivals at the Fort Punta Cristo near Pula. The work was demanding and fairly thankless, but the experience was incredible. Aesthetically the triple backdrop of the Fort, the beaches, and the Pula Amphitheatre were stunning. The latter was used each week for the opening concert. Many of my shifts were in the Fort, looking after a team of volunteers across six stages, from 7pm to 7am the following morning. Music finished at 6am each “night” and then we would slowly and painstakingly move people out of the arena. It was so different to anything I had experienced at UK Festivals.
There were many things that were less than ideal over those two weeks, and I have never worked harder for less in my life at festivals. Nonetheless, it’s another experience of 2019 that will stick with me, and I’m very grateful I was able to be part of it.
Business
Cancelling Boardmasters Festival, August 2019
This was not a good year for work. I try to balance my work life and my personal life by working Seasons. This maximises the time off over the year, and allows me to work up to 4.5 months over Winter and 3.5 months over Summer, thereby allowing 4 months of the year off. But, in 2019, the balance was not right.
I left my Winter job of 5 years early. A combination of back pain, lack of skiing, and poor internal operations left me feeling like this had become more of a job than a lifestyle choice. I felt more of a number, for the first time in 5 years, than a person. Though I’m quite open about other matters, I won’t go into more detail on the subject. But I will say that I’m a big believer in not being the victim. If you don’t like something, get out. Don’t blame others (for too long). You are in control, and the choice is yours.
I also hate not finishing what I start. But in hindsight, it was a good decision. I wasn’t happy and hadn’t been since December, and so I showed myself the exit. Two weeks later I was on holiday skiing with friends, and it reminded me of what life was meant to be about.
Business over Summer was equally shabby. I took on roles for less pay, or no pay, because I wanted to go to certain festivals. And then Boardmasters was cancelled, which didn’t help in the slightest.
In 2020 I have goals to start monetising this blog, and I’ll be thinking more about the next steps for the years to come.
Health
Feeling Zen about my health in the Japanese Garden of Monte Palace, Madeira (October 2019)
A hard part of my 2019 Review to discuss. I often feel like my body got to its mid thirties and then gave up. It’s been a hard couple of years for my health. I know others have it far worse, so I won’t dwell on it much.
In mid 2018 during a 3 week holiday to Italy, I developed massive back pain. After I returned home, and for the month after, I could barely move from bed. Walking Summer festivals put me in agony.
By 2019 I was slowly getting better. No specialists could find anything wrong, but they all knew my back was going into spasm and couldn’t seem to be stopped. Sitting and driving were painful nightmares. Some thought my spine was wrong, others that I had disc herniations. In the end, I was banded about between physios, osteos, back specialists, hip specialists, and chiropracters, and nothing helped.
Nothing except time and activity.
Luckily by December 2018 I was back on ski season having survived two months in the States travelling. In 2019 the back pain improved month on month but has since stagnated. Furthermore, as I was getting better, I started to develop more pain in my knee and hips and was diagnosed with osteoarthritis. It looks like I’ll have hip surgery this year, so watch this space.
In other health news, in October I caught a virus and then had a funny episode just off the motorway at Oxford Services that was akin to a heart attack. Palpitations and chest pain (with some arm and shoulder blade pain) have followed, and been there for three months now.
I’m still doing many of the things I love including trekking, but I’ve been told not to go near a gym or to run. Unsurprisingly, one of my goal’s for 2020 is to run 10km. I’ve decided 2020 is the year to finally get over as much of the pain from the last two years as possible.
Family
This was the year that I really understood the fragility of my parents. I believe that we do have to live our own lives, regardless of those around us and their health worries. But in October, something happened that shook my belief.
The day I launched my website just happened to be the day my Dad went into hospital with a serious condition. Normally, at that time of year, I’d be travelling for a month or two. It was a coincidence that I had decided to get a co-working space to blog and stick around England for a while.
Within a week, I was fighting for his life by getting the NHS to transport him to another hospital. He had heart, kidney and liver failure and had been left to die.
Luckily, at the second hospital, he became stable. It was a massively hard two months, driving my mother to hospital every single day. Nothing saps the life out of you like going to the same place every day, talking with doctors, watching and waiting, and dealing with the uncertainty.
It was also on that first week that I caught a virus in hospital that has now given my chest pains and palpitations, and the same month that my laptop broke, I had to deal with my Dad’s car theft, an accident with my own car, and my Mum’s understandably back-and-forth moods.
I decided to make my mountain climb up Aconcagua, the highest peak in the South Hemisphere, a chance to raise money for British Heart Foundation and Oxford Hopsitals. Their combined help has saved my Dad’s life. If you fancy donating to two great causes, my page at https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/aconcagua2020 will still be open until mid 2020.
How Good/Bad was 2019, then?
Finishing the year off (the week before Christmas) Winter Walking in the Lake District
2019 wasn’t all that bad. I would rate the beginning of the year, and October-November time a definitive 4/10 and then 1/10 but the rest came with some great memories.
I loved my time trekking through Madeira, launching my website, getting burnt on the beaches of Croatia, drinking wine in Italy, skiing and eating too much, meeting new friends and new bloggers at conferences, and a hundred more snapshots I’m forgetting.
It was also a great end to the year finishing up 3400 metres up the Andes in Argentina in a small tent drinking to the Russian and English New Year.
But now my mind is fully on 2020 – it’s a New Year, it’s a New Decade, and you can find my resolutions here.