Posted by Whenever a year is passed, it is interesting to spend some time and put the thoughts together and look back. If I can describe the year 2020 in one word, then I would use “unprecedented”, as the whole world all of a sudden locked down, work and life had to get adjusted in a very short time, it was not easy, but we survived.
2021 was not better, but at least it was no longer unprecedented. There were no more big surprises, life continues.
What happened to me in the last year?
Blog
I have started with a new direction for this blog this year, instead of cultural or personal articles, I started to write more useful information regarding working in Belgium. Meanwhile, from the beginning of the year, I also started with a Chinese blog (on Wechat) writing similar content serving the Chinese community, it quickly gained thousands of followers on WeChat and I started to know quite some other Chinese living in Belgium outside my social network.
It was quite some work to put all the things together, but truly fruitful to build the connections!
oh I also started to put google ads on the blog to see if the ads revenue can help me to cover the domain and hosting fee, so far not yet, but hopefully one day!
Health
I have been rather healthy this year, except for a short cold during the summer, I did not suffer anything else. So far I have also been lucky to be covid free (knock the wood) 🙂
My Tinnitus is still not recovered yet, but I have learned to live with it. I don’t get crazy about the ringing and no sleep issue. At work, we have delivered one of the biggest programs in summer, so my stress level was also lower, hopefully, the tinnitus can go away one day completely.
Sport
I have been doing quite some sports in 2020, starting from morning Yoga at the beginning of the year, and then weekend badminton since the summer.
Hope the routine can continue in 2022.
Travel
We brought back some travels during the year, we went to southern France in the summer, experienced snorkeling for the first time! Then in September, we went for a road trip to Germany, unfortunately, we missed the ski trip in the winter this year.
In a way, travel feels different than before, less crazy, more chill. Maybe it is because of the pandemic, or because we have seen most of the “must-sees” in our crazy 2018 and 2019.
Financials
Financials in 2021 was quite ok. No big spendings, in the past, our biggest expenditure was long-distance travel, it did not happen in 2021, so we could save more than before. There were also quite some good finance-related decisions we’ve made last year, I will write a separate post about it.
Social
We were able to keep more social connections thanks to the vaccination. Not as much as I would like to have, but already better than 2020. I hope 2022 can have more relaxed measures with the virus getting weaker.
Work
In the year 2021, I have learned a lot of new things on the job thanks to an organizational change in late 2020. My team also onboarded new members, who helped me share some workload and more importantly from whom I learned a lot of things.
In 2022, I will again take another role aligned with my career endeavors, I hope things work out!
Resolution
In general, 2022 begins with quite some changes for me personally and professionally, my new year resolution is to be healthy in physical and mental form and everything happening right now turns out to be smooth.
Check out my year summaries from the past:
2020 – A whole year of challenges with a touch of sweetness
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels