A look back at 2020

Well that was a year wasn't it. But most of us made it through and we send our thoughts to those who lost loved ones. 

There were many ups and downs but in all I feel like I made it through with a good result at the end. 

I always aim to be debt free and have savings. Well this year I am debt free! I burnt through my savings but should recover a little by 2021. So massive tick there.

I always aim to lose weight. I did, not as much as I would have liked but dropped two dress sizes and am certainly alot more comfortable with my size now. I have also started a weightloss blog to track my journey. I have always been overweight so I know an awful lot about dieting haha

I started an etsy shop called Mothermaple which has seen sales steadily grow over the last 3months. I'm really excited to see what I can make of it next year! 

I have seen my baby brother become a father and be so proud of his little man. It's funny actually, we came from a generation of almost all girls. My son was the first of his generation after a line up of 13girls! Now we have rue at 6yrs old, my sisters boys are 5 and 3 and now my brothers son at 1month old. Can't wait to watch them grow up together. Will be interesting to see if we end out with a girl in there somewhere. Realistically my sister and I are done but my brother is keen for many more. We three were the oldest of our cousins so none of them have kids yet. We are in for some larger family gatherings in the future I'm sure. 

I was able to upgrade nearly all of my furniture. This might seem like an odd one but most of the things I had were fast and cheap buys when me and my ex split. The fridge was a big one as the old one was not at all sealed and would often defrost and refreeze costing me electricity and money on wasted food. Updating your suroundings is an important human trait too feel relaxed and content. Its our home, it needs to reflect our personality too.

I have grown closer to my friends. We instigated a weekly online gaming session at the start of lockdown as well as group chat sessions while all watching the same movies. It really saved our sanity and once lockdown was lifted we started a weekly board game session which for those of us working from home all year was great to get us out of the house and into a social situation without risking our health as many of us live with only 1 or two other people we were able to meet up as a small group of 6.

[For those not in Australia, our lockdown was a hard one from early March when schools closed and a stay at home order was issued. This was lifted around May-June for many people but we were still told to stay home unless we needed to go out or to work. We had a second hard lockdown for Melbourne in I think Start of July. Thankfully this was clamped down hard and the cluster peaked at 500 cases before going back down. Unfortunately they were in a hard lockdown for about 4-5months! With many only just returning to work this month. We were actually Covid free for a few weeks in the whole country! We now have another lock down in Sydney but because of our government doing this it prevents the whole country having to lockdown and it still sits at less than 100 cases. We have been extremely lucky in Canberra where we only had 103 cases for the whole pandemic and that was in the early months. This has meant we have been careful but out of lockdown for a while and masks were never really needed. We are all very careful about maintaining the 6ft distance rules and constant hand cleaning and all of our businesses are open and functioning with limited capacity with stage 1 guidelines (I think its 1 person per 2sqm?).]

With some countries having emergency approval for vaccines already starting to be distributed and the rest of us lining up from early next year I can see a light ahead for 2021. I think by 2022 life will have returned to normal for most of the world. I am so proud of how most of the world has handled this. We have banded together to get things done, supporting business online to ensure people don't lose their livley hood. We have adapted and overcome so many hurdles in such a tight frame of time and under very stressful circumstances! So congratulations to everyone for pulling yourselves and those around you through this year. We have connected in ways we never have before and im so excited to see what comes out the other side.