My 2014 guiding work was “grow” and I’m not sure that the year really lived up to my plans – a lot of things went really well but I also felt stagnant in some areas. We didn’t have any huge events this year – no moving house, babies being born or trips to foreign countries but I do think personally I managed to grow in terms of confidence and making decisions for my personal and professional life. I said last year that I wanted to focus more on myself this year – get my health back on track and get out without the kids and I’ve definitely achieved that.

So lets see how I did with my goals from last year:

• Make $5,000 a month consistently – Umm, no….
• Make at least half my income from my own businesses (not client work) – Yes! Hooray! Not making as much as I’d like yet but lets make that this year’s goal.
• Pay off my “small” debt (which is not that small but separate from my “big” debt of student loans and bank of mum and dad mortgages) – see above. no way this was going to happen but at least it’s no worse!
• Launch 2 new websites – yes! Not the ones I originally planned but still… I’m hoping for many more this year
• Write an e-book – not yet.
• Learn to drive a motorbike – YES!!! This is probably my biggest achievement from 2014 and I squeezed it right in at the end of the year. I also crashed it but I’ll leave that for another post.
• Create a beautiful learning/playing space in our home – not quite. I did improve our existing space though.
• Cook 12 new meals (one a month and hopefully more!) – meh. No but I did bake lots of bread and a couple of cakes. Meals coming now that I can drive myself to the supermarket!
• Have 12  family fun days out (and hopefully more) – hmmm…. not sure?
• Make 12 videos of the kids and our life (a la documenting delight) – ha! no.
• Go on 12 date nights with my husband (carrying this one over from last year – we managed a few!) – I’m pretty sure we overachieved on this. We even got in a night away without the kids!
• Visit family and friends in the UK – not yet 🙁
• Fill a sketchbook with drawings – all I drew this year were cars for Kiran
• Get up early and develop a morning routine – sort of. I did this in the last couple of months but didn’t stick to it.

I think looking back 2014 was a good year for me although it felt pretty quiet and uneventful. I weaned Kiran in June and that allowed the possibility of me leaving him overnight and getting out in the evening more without the kids (previously I would feed him to sleep). Now we leave the kids with their grandparents at least a couple of nights a month and get some alone time. We’re also getting more sleep with both kids finally sleeping through the night.

I knew my health had to be a priority last year after spending the last half of 2013 recovering from dengue and I’m glad to say I felt a lot healthier overall this year. I’ve been trying to eat better (although still some improvements to be done there) and I felt amazing when I was doing yoga every day so definitely have to get back into that.

In April I had a bit of a crisis about my work and trying to figure out what I was doing that I wrote about here. In June I ended up going all in and quitting all my regular freelance jobs to concentrate on my own projects. Things have been going ok but this year I really need to push with that and make some proper money.

My Indonesian has also improved greatly and my confidence along with it. I’m finally driving a motorbike (I’ve been saying I’m going to do this for the last 5 years) and that has also given me so much more confidence and independence.

So my 2015 word is SHINE! I have a feeling this will be a great year for us and I’m excited for this new sparkly shiny new year!

15 things for 2015:

1. Yoga every day (even if it’s just 5 minutes)
2. More real food, less crap and sugar
3. Find a bahasa Indonesia teach and progress from conversational to fluent
4. Stick to my debt repayment schedule
5. Hit my income goals for the year (haven’t worked this out yet)
6. Stop shouting at the kids
7. Teach Maya to read
8. Get up at 5am every morning (not got off to a good start with this one, haha!)
9. Make a craft space in our spare room
10. Visit the UK
11. Write a book
12. Redesign and relaunch my blog
13. Stop being unproductive when i’m using my computer – 60% + productivity in rescuetime every week
14. Get out of the house more – go out for coffee or lunch at least once a week
15. Write a million words.

Hope everyone celebrated the New Year in the way they wanted (I fell asleep with the kids at about 10pm and missed everything, haha!) and I wish you all a fantastic 2015 x