My 5 Top 2017 Moments

According to Instagram, most of my top nine 2017 moments have my face in them as if I was an otherworldly beauty set to conquer planet earth. This, though, could not be any further from the reality.

These are my true top 2017 moments:

  1. Work team becoming my “work family”. 2017 saw my team at work grow and get a radical facelift at the same time; old confidants were replaced by fresh faces. Working in a client servicing position is a challenging task that will have you on your toes 97% of the time.It can be stressful, intense, demanding, restless. Nevertheless, having the support of a great team can make the biggest difference: my work family has taught, nurtured, supported, listened, advised, promoted me. It has also fed me cake, got me drunk, got me dancing, shared inside jokes, declared me “Meme Queen of 2017”, had me laughing at the darkest times and mercilessly criticized the fact that, at the tender age of 24, I still hadn’t seen Dirty Dancing.

  2. New York. New York is an unparalleled, once-in-a-lifetime experience. [Unless you decide to move there.] I strongly feel that even if you return there, it will always give you, to a certain extent, the impression that you’re visiting a new, exciting place for the very first time. I had a blast with my family there and I feel blessed for this opportunity. At the same time, New York triggered an unexpected reaction inside of me: it felt like seeing an extraordinarily handsome, charming man and realising that, nevertheless, there’s none quite like your boyfriend. New York made London finally feel like home. Weird, huh?


  3. The first freelance translation project. November was domineered by a constant feeling of fatigue for me; I didn’t have any motivation to workout, see friends, make plans or simply continue with my urban explorations. All I wanted to do is to stay home and stare on my smartphone screen. Then my first big translation project arrived: I would come home from my 9 to 6 job every day and work until 1 am with only a short break to have dinner and talk to my flatmate. Two long weekends in a row were spent with me perched on the couch with my laptop in my lap, typing until my eyes hurt. Sounds exhausting? I hadn’t felt so energetic and enthusiastic about life (and work) in a long time!

     

  4. #ReadingChallenge2017. This is one of the few resolutions that I kept this year; my love for books was revived, reaching the pre-social media levels of my teen years, when I used to go around with my nose stuck into a book. I kept tracking the books that I read using Goodreads – the final goal was to read 24 books in 2017, i.e. two books per month. Twelve months later, I’m well into my 33rd book and have a halfway read Anna Karenina lying around at home.

  5. Friendships. 2017 gave me the chance to strengthen old friendships and catch-up with friends I hadn’t seen in a while but it also brought an amazing series of new people into my life and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. Life sometimes feels like a piece of IKEA furniture: you might have used all the screws included in the box but you will definitely end up with either a couple spare ones or with a particularly unstable construction. Then, you find screws, erm I meant people, who enter your life and seamlessly become a part of it. Not necessarily because they’re similar to you, most of the time they’re the exact opposites – they challenge you, inspire you, motivate you, accept you for what you are but are not afraid to criticize you (fiercely but constructively), teach you to be more open-minded, more driven, more self-less. To be more.

Speaking of more and thankfulness, a few words for my 365/365 “project” which is slowly coming to an end (?). It started almost accidentally but it quickly became a way for me to keep track of the time – it passes oh so quickly – as well as to count my blessings. See, I have this peculiar notion that there’s something beautiful in every day; something to bring us joy. This unofficial project showed me not only how to make photographic memories of beautiful instances but to also how to become more alert to them. Great things happens everyday, the only thing we need to do is take notice.

This is my face when I think of 2017:

2017 was a blessing (sometimes in disguise). Probably not the best year yet – does this year ever come around?

As this is probably my last post for 2017, I would like to wish everyone reading these lines a merry Christmas and an amazing New Year ahead. Hope the holidays are full of the 3 essential F’s: family, friends & food!

Joyful (as always),

F.

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