I have always loved the start of a new year. So many possibilities, an entirely clean slate and absolutely no idea who you will meet, what you will see, where you will end up in just 365 days. At the beginning of 2018 I was single and very sure that was not going to change for a while, I had just started my Master thesis, I had no idea that I would get the internship in radio that I had applied for multiple times over the last two years and I had not met some of the people, who would become one of the highlights of my year. 

Fast forward 12 months and I am sitting in my first own room in Melbourne after sharing hostel rooms, beds and campervans for 100 days (but who´s counting) accompanied by my wonderful boyfriend, who I though had left my life for good, with a Master´s degree and not only an internship in radio but a relatively stable freelance job. I lived in Cologne for two months and worked there on and off for the entire year, a city I never visited before or had spared much thought, but which would bring me a wonderful job with amazing colleagues and beautiful (and here I mean inside and out) new friends. I have travelled for three months, making this the longest I have ever been away from home, I got to see friends again who lived on other continents and made amazing new ones, I felt much less homesick than ever before and I absolutely fell in love with Australia and especially Melbourne, which to be fair I really did not expect.

And here I am a week into a new year and I have really no idea where I will end up at the beginning of 2020. I hope I will get a full time job and move to a city I love, but I do not know where or what that job will be (or if I will get one at all) and when that job will start. I realistically have no idea what my life will look like after March, where I will live, what I will do... All of this feels really daunting at times, the idea that I will be a "real adult" this year, no longer a student or someone doing a gap year, but somebody who works full time. But I am also really excited to have so many new chances and so much change coming my way and really can´t wait to get 2019 started. I have another nine weeks in Australia, five more in Melbourne and then four travelling from Brisbane to Cairns with one of my oldest friends and all I really know at the moment is that on March 8th at 4:30 pm I have a flight back to Frankfurt and I will arrive just in time for my friends´ birthday party on the 9th.

With a year this uncertain it is quite difficult to make New Year´s Resolutions or plans, but I have some nonetheless.

One of them is to finally blog more again. I really love the freedom this blog gives me, writing about whichever topic and in whatever way I like, which especially other journalists who are used to continuous outside edits may understand. Writing is my first love, it is what I always wanted to do and I really think it is quite sad that it has become more of a chore than what it should be: a hobby I enjoy.

When blogging and realistically in almost any aspect of life we think we have to follow certain rules. For a long time I felt like I had to blog about fashion or make up simply because that´s what everyone seemed to blog about. But more and more I realised that is not what I am about. I like to write more personal texts or little snippets of my travels or even just recipes. I want to go back to that, to all the things I love and sharing them instead of following a cut out version of a "blogger", which I never really seemed to fit anyway no matter how hard I try. For a really long time this "shortcoming" made me feel like I should just not even try to blog, because I did not do it "perfectly". I don´t stay in five star resorts, my travel outfits are usually yoga pants and a sweatshirt and while I thoroughly enjoyed Bali, I have not made it to Tulum or Dubai and to be fair I don´t have any desire to visit the latter. But I can give real tips on how to overcome homesickness or how to pack a backpack or how to find deals on cheap hostels. I can not show my new designer bags, but I can and want to share my experiences with mental health, my struggles with body image or tips on how to handle long distance relationships. And while that may not be as picture perfect as many Instagram photos or as aesthatically pleasing as a shoot from the Maldives, it is real. And it is me.

And if I have one real New Years´ resolution it is to be more real and more myself in 2019 and to have a fucking great time while I am at it. I would love for this blog to become a platform where we share real stories and feelings, I absolutely love interacting with you guys, I love when people tell me they relate to my writing and I love if I can help one of you. So I hope I am not the only one excited for more posts in 2019.

Read: The Bell Jar, which was haunting in how well it described being a young woman at the breach of adulthood. 

Quote: “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” 

Sylvia Plath

Listened: To a fair bit of the Wombats. And my absolute favourite trash playlist.

Seen: The Grampians National Park, which was absolutely beautiful and also one of my amazing exchange friends from Boston

Celebrated: Still being 25 for another week and my friend turning 25 on the 2nd. Oh and obviously New Years.

Loved: January not being miserable, grey and cold. As weird as a summer Christmas was, I am so down for a summer NYE and rooftop drinks in Jan.

Ate: Delicious Indian food. Yet another perfect dinner at my friend´s house and Caramello Koala Cupcakes. New Year´s Diet remains questionable.

My Highlight: My boyfriend extended his trip for another week, which made for an extra special start into 2019.

Struggle Bus: For some mystical reason sometime in December my laptop stopped charging. As much as I love Apple that laptop not working in times of very important job applications was already stressful and knowing it may cost a fortune to fix it did not help. Luckily I got a new charger for free, which worked perfectly well - at the Apple store. When I then got a mail that one of the files uploaded for my application was faulty and I could only download them from the iCloud in a file format Windows could not open I almost gave up and threw myself of the impressive balcony of our Airbnb, but alas after standing in an Apple store awkwardly for two hours to charge my laptop and upload files to my cloud my laptop seems to work perfectly fine again. Funny how that works.