2020: A YEAR OF GROWTH

Well, what a year, eh?

I went into it – perhaps a little naively – believing that this would be the year I embarked on my dream career, maybe buying a house or two as I went along, with my first novel ready for publication at the end of December. Well, how wrong I was!

Personally, 2020 was the messiest year I’ve ever had – and yet, it really wasn’t too bad in the grand scheme of things. My friends and family are healthy, I’ve gained a new appreciation for the art of stillness, and I’ve had time to really figure out who I want to be. Not all too bad, considering the apocalypse.

As such, I’ve decided to do a little reflection post on one of the weirdest and most confusing years of my life, thinking back on the good things that a year of isolation and barricades has granted.

Without further ado, here’s (almost) 20 things that 2020 gave me.

STARTED UP MY OWN TEA BUSINESS*

*Almost!

The first thing on this list is probably one of the biggest things, as it includes a whole business plan I wasn’t expecting to start working on until I was about thirty years old.

My girlfriend and I spent the majority of this year researching how exactly we could start up our own tea business, how we could possibly begin to tackle such a big challenge, and what sort of products we would want to put out into the world. This means that hopefully, it will come into being – at least small scale – by mid-2021.

We spent most of lockdown undertaking tea qualifications and attending online tea and business talks – along with drinking over 250 different types of tea within the span of about nine months. Hopefully, it will all come together nicely, and then we can share our delicious products with you!

GRATEFUL FOR MORE TIME TO PLAN MY DOCUMENTARIES

Not only have I been able to spend more time bouncing ideas off of my favourite explorers and documentary makers about the Walking Wales Expedition, but I have also been able to invest more time into my big doc, which we will hopefully start shooting next September.

The idea of the feature will be focused around the lives of several First Nations groups in western Canada, who are currently undergoing tremendous levels of resurgence and resistance in regards to culture, language, and politics. I will go out to British Columbia for several months, learning as much as I can and bringing their stories to UK audiences.

The documentary was postponed due to Covid, which gives me a whole year longer to create deeper, more meaningful connections with the participants, and a wider timeline to sort out the itinerary, the costs, the storyline, and all of the other million little bits that go along with organising a whole documentary.

It’s going to be great, and I’ll let you guys know more about it as the time nears.

FALLEN IN LOVE WITH SKATING

I used to be such a big fan of rollerskating when I was younger, and never went very long without indulging in the sport. Saying this though, since I was about 15 I hadn’t really skated – which was such a shame as I used to be so good at it! So this year just after lockdown, I dusted off my old boots and took them to the concrete skatepark near my house, and my passion was refuelled!

My girlfriend and I would take it in turns to use this one pair of broken boots, slowly gathering confidence and skill as the sun would rise each morning. And then my first pair of Moxi’s arrived and I was able to go harder and faster and more serious, and now I can’t go a single day without posting a new trick on my skating Instagram.

The sport has given me so much – increased fitness, a reason to get up early and get stuff done, cool skatepark friends, an outlet to release negative energy – and I couldn’t have spent the past year doing a better activity.

TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHAT I WANT TO ACHIEVE

2020 gave me a LOT of time to plan out my future goals, and visualise where I want to be in however many years time. I have pretty much sorted out the whole entire floor plan for my future house, and narrowed down the countries I would like to live in to sixteen.

I have had time to figure out exactly where I aspire to be when I turn 25 – which is undertaking my first BIG expedition (even though I still have no coherent idea as to what that could be).

My girlfriend and I painted our vision boards this spring, surrounded by pu’erh tea and good records, planning out what we want to achieve in our lives. Some of the top things that I spent time manifesting were owning a tea business (woohoo!), writing for Nat Geo, travelling to the Empty Quarter, securing a train company sponsorship, maintaining a good health, having a novel I’ve written on the funky tables you get when you enter Waterstones, and getting a Guinness World Record.

I think there are worse goals to dream about!

PICKED UP A WHOLE LOTTA NEW SKILLS

Whilst a good majority of the skills I have spent time *perfecting* are pretty pointless, some I think are pretty cool. These are as follows (you can decide for yourself whether they’re useful or pointless):

• How to play chess to an okay standard. It’s still likely that I will lose to anyone I play against, but at least I understand the rules!
• How to do a handstand (against a wall, but still, baby steps)
• How to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
• What all of the different zodiacs mean, and the difference between rising, moon, and sun signs
• The different stages of the moon, and how these can effect mood and behaviour
• The complete lyrics to Un Amigo Fiel, the Latino version of Aladdin’s Friend Like Me
• The great (and not-so-great) explorers and exactly what they achieved, to a pretty good detail
• What stands for good country music and bad country music (the leader of the former is Buddy Brown, of course)
• The spelling difference between desert and dessert
• How to edit videos (albeit not very well)

REALISED JUST HOW MUCH I LOVE AND VALUE FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Being able to spend quality time with the people you love can only be a blessing, and I for one was able to learn so much from the people around me and get to understand them on a level I felt we maybe hadn’t quite reached before.

My girlfriend and I celebrated a whole year together, and were still able to have a great anniversary despite all of the hurdles that were thrown at us. We had some of the cutest dates, went into scandalous little businesses together, travelled across Europe for several months, and baked some of the best food ever. It was pretty sweet.

BECAME OPEN WITH MY SEXUALITY

As it happens, I’d gone on telling people that I was bisexual since I was about 15, and yet I never really had any evidence to back it up. But then in 2019 I realised that this label wasn’t quite right despite really being the only one that fit, and then in 2020 I learnt how to use my words and vocalise who I am and what I believe in.

This was further reinforced when I lived with the most homophobic Brummie lady in existence for a week over in Lombardy, who only cemented my ideas about myself. As it happens, she was the worst person I have ever met in my entire existence – I promise to tell you all about it next month! – and that only made it all clearer to me.

WRITTEN NEARLY 30K OF MY NOVEL

I know it doesn’t sound awfully impressive when I write about 2k a day for this blog or other blog-related duties, but considering I’ve had writer’s block with that particular manuscript (and all other novel ideas) for the past couple years, I think it’s marvellous that I was finally able to get my ideas out.

Thorough planning was my unexpected knight in armour, as for the first time since conceptualising the piece, I was able to actually visualise the characters and come to grips with exactly who and what I wanted to portray in my book. My initial goal was to write 1k a day starting from the end of lockdown, which should have put me at around 200k…but we move on.

TAKEN MY HEALTH INTO MY HANDS

With almost zero parties going on, and little desire to have alcohol and food products I know I’m intolerant to, this year has meant that I have really avoided temptation and been able to look after my own health pretty well.

I have been able to truly listen to my body and understands its needs, and from that, I have come out a healthier, more physically aware person – even if the lack of a gym means that I’m not quite as beefy as I would like to be.

MANY BREAKDOWNS LED TO MANY BREAKTHROUGHS

2020 gave me a LOT of time for self-reflection, which wasn’t always positively enlightening, I’ll be honest with you. I had so many existential crises about ageing, the concept of death, the idea that I had no future, feeling lost and depressed and isolated, and my worsening anxiety (to the point where I couldn’t even introduce myself on a Zoom call due to a lack fo social interaction and an unnecessary amount of pressure put on myself).

It’s been a hard year and I’m still working through a lot of these things, but I have definitely come to learn more about myself, who I want to be, and my whole opinion on the meaning of life through it.

COOKED MORE THAN EVER BEFORE

I’m going to be honest and say that it’s partly because of my food-orientated girlfriend – but I promise that sometimes I did do more than just trail after her in the kitchen. I assisted in baking fish cakes, handmade tagliatelli, a wide array of breads, and more sweet things than I can possibly keep count of. It’s been a very well-fed year.

Alternatively, I’ve also cooked some pretty disgusting things. Green pancakes, watery rice krispies, paella with old and tasteless seafood… but it is all experience, right?

(Although I’m not sure my flatmates would have seen it that way…)

LEARNT SO MUCH ABOUT THE WORLD OF TEA

So much in fact, that I was actually able to start up my own tea course!

I like to think that I was pretty well versed in the world of tea before, dedicating so much of my time to attending tea ceremonies and tea talks and trying as many variants of the beautiful plant as possible, but this year I have really had the opportunity (and time…) to dedicate myself to learning. My studies have covered pretty much all areas surrounding the history of the camellia sinensis plant, the incredible cultures that drink from it, and what unami actually is.

Being hands-on and learning how to work the leaves and spices myself, and then forming that into many different flavour combinations of my own meant that I have gotten an insight into the world of tea that I doubt I would have gotten otherwise.

MY SPANISH GOT SLIIIIGHTLY BETTER

I’ll be honest and say that it hasn’t improved as much as it could have – but spending some time as a goat farmer in Spain meant that I was exposed to words I’d never tried wrapping my tongue around before. With extra time to study the language, I tried translating parts of several books – and whilst this isn’t an activity that I do everyday, every little counts.

Right?

GOT BACK INTO MY UKE

Whilst I didn’t record any new songs or do anything particularly jazzy, I was able to dust off my beloved ukulele and get back into the game. I re-awakened my fingers to a whole bunch of chords I was never really expertly adapt at playing before, and recorded a couple of old songs for friends and family.

Hopefully in the future I would be able to switch out the uke for a banjo, and join an old-time country band to tour across the Bible Belt.

DID MY FIRST EVER DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW

I realised at some point during the first lockdown that I’ve pretty much planned my whole life around the idea that I want to host my own documentaries (along with other things), and yet hadn’t actually had any experience with doing so. As such, I started planning a bunch of little interviews in Wales, and had my first last month!

This first interview was with a really cool guy called Ben Gwalchmai who supports independence for Wales (and who wouldn’t?), in order to learn more about his values and mission. It went pretty well, and made me feel as though maybe I can actually host documentaries myself.

Over the next few months (COVID willing), I want to meet with a whole bunch of incredible people across Wales. There’s a psychic, a fisherman, a caver, and a handful of old Miss Wales winners, along with many more. All of that time spent binge-watching documentaries in lockdown has really come in handy!

INTERVIEWED A WHOLE BUNCH OF ROLE MODELS

One of the best things that came out of this year has to be the fact that I was able to have a bunch of conversations with some of the most influential travellers and documentary hosts out there. I was able to learn even more about how exactly to run an interview and how to stage it all – along with learning how to actually work Zoom.

I feel as though a certain type of confidence is built when you learn how to initiate a functioning conversation with the people that instil you with inspiration – and I’m kind of glad that we had to stay home for so long, as I doubt they would have had the time for me otherwise!

Some of my favourite people that I was able to talk with this year include Karl Pilkington, Vedangi Kulkarni, Liv Arnesen, Darius Arya, Ash Bhardwaj, and Mark Beaumont. I also have some pretty cool talks with people like Charlet Duboc and Chris Bonington hopefully coming about in the new year!

PUBLISHED COOL ARTICLES WITH SOME GREAT OUTLETS

I also received my highest paying commission ever, which was unexpected! I wrote so many articles for the New Welsh Review, I did a piece for Buzzfeed, and I was lucky enough to find myself published in Hidden Europe. I’ll link it when it’s out.

Along with that, I did a whole lot of smaller pieces for blogs and websites across the globe. Whilst a good handful of them only got about five views maximum, it felt good to be able to pour so much of myself into my writing and have other writers appreciate it.

I found myself on the Europe Diaries, Jessie on a Journey, Mapping Megan, Voyager for Life, and Sick Chirpse, along with so many more.

FINISHED MY DEGREE

Of course, this one kinda just happened by default – but I’m pretty chuffed with it anyway! I finished a banging dissertation and got a 1st Honours Bachelor’s Degree for it, which I’d been hoping for ever since I had started uni.

That still didn’t help me when applying for over 200 jobs during a pandemic as a post-grad though. Ouch.

READ APPROXIMATELY 42 BOOKS

I know, I know, it’s kind of pathetic considering most of this year has been spent in lockdown, but I never realised how many books I consume when travelling and flitting between places and transport.

Still, I feel as though 42 isn’t too bad a number, especially considering the fact that around half of them were freebies in exchange for my writing of detailed book reviews. I read some really cool books this year, with my favourites being:

• The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World by Torre DeRoche
• Tazmamart by Aziz BineBine
• Hitchhiking the Silk Road by Levison Wood
• The Great Railway Bazaar by the man, the legend, Paul Theroux
• The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl
• Tough Women Adventure Stories by Jenny Tough
• Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger
• The Librarian by Salley Vickers
• Expeditions Unpacked by Ed Stafford
• Stranger to the Desert by Dorothy Ross
• The Lost City of Z by David Grann
• Secret Britain by Mary Ann Ochota
• The Last Giants again by Levison Wood

Have you guys ever read any of these ones before?

And so, that pretty much sums up 2020! I can’t say that it was an awful year as my loved ones are all safe and well and nothing drastically horrendous happened to me, but it has certainly had its up and downs.

A plus side of that is that really, it can only get better!

Let me know in the comments below how 2020 treated you!

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