Looking ahead to 2020, looking back at 2019

Even though 2020 is only a few days away, I’m still in a sort of shock that this year, and decade are coming to an end. Everything feels so fast yet so slow. I’ve been lucky enough this decade to move to a new country and change jobs and learn so much about life.

I started this decade living in the middle of rural Ontario, Canada and right now I’m sitting in a Cafe in the middle of Seoul, South Korea. If you had asked me in 2010 where I would be now, I’d call you crazy. The reality is that I’ve been here nearing 8 years and it has been a wild ride, one that I’m unsure of its end. Like many things in my life, I don’t see a clear starting point or ending point for any change.

Because the new decade is so close, I’ve been feeling a desire for some life changes, some attempts to feel like I’ve made some progress in my life over the past couple years. Even though I make more money and live in a bigger apartment, I still feel like it's not enough and that I want to be more comfortable with my life. Am I ungrateful? Or am I just ambitious?

I’ve been working freelance now for almost 6 years, and it has many ups and downs, mostly downs. Working freelance is unstable and one week you can be working 12 hours a day, the next you can have multiple days without any income at all. It's no way to live for most people, and for me, I would eventually like some stability.

This has become one of the reasons I’ve started writing a lot, not only to express some form of a creative need, but to practice a skill and get better at it. To invest time into myself and to improve at something I’ve long wanted to be better at. I’ve never been a good writer, I remember in high school, my teachers always asked me to give spoken answers to questions because my writing was so bad that they would have failed me. I’ve luckily gotten a lot better since then (I hope for those reading that it has).

I’ve also started dressing better and spending more time on how I present myself, a lot of my clients and friends have noticed and thankfully it's been a positive change in my life. I found myself being drawn to buying and collecting watches as of late as well, which has proven to be way more addictive than I had intended, I think watch people would understand that feeling of “just one more watch”.

I guess I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent though. Though this is my blog post and I can write whatever I want to.

Life has kept throwing me curve balls and I feel 2020 and beyond will be no exception to this rule. I want to take it head on and start this decade with a gallop instead of a crawl like I usually do. I know there are things on my horizon that will be difficult, things I cannot avoid and eventually will have to encounter. I will work hard to lessen the blow and impact they will have on my life.

I really don’t know where I am going with this post, or whether I have any real conclusions to share, or if this will matter to myself or anyone. Will I look back on this post in a year and laugh at myself for feeling so unsure of myself? Or will I look back and regret that I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do?

I think we should all try to look back and try to look at how we can make things better for ourselves and our loved ones. Feeling regret for the things you didn’t do is a waste of time, because the 2nd best time to do what you didn’t do is to start it now.

I’m not sure if the next decade will be as unique as the one before it, but I hope it has more highs than the last, with a lot less lows. Bring it on 2020!