As I rang in the new year, I was thinking a lot about the year 2019 and everything that happened over the past 365 days. In usual fashion and like everyone else, I downloaded the “Top Nine” app to see my top 9 liked photos on Instagram during the year. The pictures weren’t surprising, as they made up a lot of big, exciting, fun things that I did during 2019.

Twenty nineteen was good to me. I finished up my incredible rotation with work and spent three months in California. I fell in love with the West Coast after visiting some of the most beautiful places that I’ve been to in the US. I celebrated love and attended another buttload of weddings for dear friends. I went back to Australia to visit my family and watch my cousin get married. I traveled to three new states and visited with lots of friends. I saw FUCKING Lin-Manuel Miranda reprive is role of Hamilton in Puerto Rico. I bought my dream car. I visited the Museum of Ice Cream (my new favorite place) TWICE. I got a gorgeous tattoo. I got Lasik. I continued to work on my fitness and health and saw some major progress. I attended two music festivals and countless concerts. I made a huge life decision and announced that next summer I will be moving to the West Coast. So yeah, 2019 was good to me.

But what you don’t see so explicitly on social media are the not so sweet parts of life that are also happening because, well, we usually don’t go around posting about the shit that we are going through.

Twenty nineteen was also not so good to me. I started seeing a therapist weekly to deal with everything going on in my life. After almost four years together, I went through a really tough break-up and lost my best friend, my roommate, my confidant, my support system all in one swoop. With the break-up, I also lost most of my social life because over the years as my friends moved away, my new friendships developed around my relationship and his friends. At the completion of my rotation, I came home after traveling every week as a single woman to an empty home and to very few friends. Talk about lonely. I had periods where I stopped working out and ate like complete shit. I wasn’t consistently taking care of myself and saw the yo-yo effect my bad choices had on my body. I threw myself into work and took on too much at some points, making it a lot harder to balance my work and life, even though we weren’t in busy season yet. I had some stressful situations with friends and family. We had to put down one of our cats after she was attacked on Thanksgiving day. So yeah, 2019 kind of sucked too.

2019 had its ups and downs.

So what are my resolutions for 2020? I have none. I’m kicking off this year exactly as I did last year – new year, same me. I have lots of really exciting things coming up including a cross-country move and an extended vacation to Asia! I want to continue to travel and fulfill my dreams to see the world. I want to keep taking care of myself and my body by practicing self-care, working out, and eating right (most of the time). I want to visit friends and meet new people. I want to be a kind, caring, and good person. I want to puh myself out of my comfort zone and take risks. I owe it to myself.

2020 is going to be a good one. I can feel it!