My Highlights of 2023
Looking back at the year in hand is one of my favourite things to do at this time of year. I’m full to the brim on Christmas leftovers, I’m busily setting up my bullet journal for next week(!) and the quietness of Betwixmas makes me feel incredibly pensive.




Like I mentioned in my books round-up last week, when I reflect on 2023, I can comfortably say it was a great year. It was a year where my relationship and friendships thrived, I continued to work in my dream role for one of my favourite luxury brands, I secured a new job and even returned to study. And, for the first time in a few years, I’m happy with the balance of how I captured it online, right here.
Lots of travel
As a keen traveller, I was incredibly excited to return to exploring our planet more once things returned to normality. This year was a great year of adventuring: UK staycations, countryside walks and hikes, European city breaks to Rome, Athens, Berlin, Split and Dubrovnik, and even just discovering more local restaurants and small businesses in towns and villages close to where I live. I feel grateful to have travelled so much and seen more of the world, for I am far richer for it.
Next year? We’ll be saving and saving to make a big trip back to Malaysia and Hong Kong to cuddle my Granny, meet all of my gorgeous new nieces and nephews (who are getting so big?!) and finally see our new family holiday home. COVID really paused so many of our 2020 plans…




Finally watching Grey’s Anatomy!
I famously am forever behind on popular shows, films and books. I’m a big backlist reader, preferring to slowly discover a book outside of its hype, and the same goes for almost everything else. So, in May, I embarked on the journey of a lifetime and started watching Grey’s Anatomy over a decade behind everybody else. It was a mission – an unsuccessful one at that – to avoid spoilers, but we made it and, damn, what a rollercoaster. Let’s leave it at that.
Starting my investing journey
With solo home ownership off the cards for now, I poured all of my financial interests into beginning my investing journey. I’ve always made off-hand comments about investing in bags – and it’s true, one of my luxury bags has actually quadrupled in value! – so I finally applied that to an investment portfolio. I spent plenty of time researching and researching, and eventually began trading stocks in May. It’s one of my biggest achievements in 2023.





Prioritising my health
One of my goals for the year was to prioritise my health, after a few health scares at the end of 2022. And I’m happy to report that I did prioritise my health, all year. If something seemed off – and I’m pretty intuitive when it comes to my body – then I made sure to call the GP and make an appointment. I’ve tweaked workouts to boost my cardiovascular health and done SO much research on the best supplements for my current situation. Friends, it’s been a year of antibiotics, appointments and all sorts of ailments, but I’m glad that I’ve been keeping on top of things.
Improved my relationship with social media and the Internet
Something that I was keen to work on at the start of the year was my fraught relationship with social media and the Internet. Like many millennials that grew up online, all I’ve known is to be online. But I was starting to notice that the Internet came first, experiences second, for me, and I hated it. Hand-in-hand with no longer requiring to market myself as a freelancer, I could stop posting ‘with purpose’ on Instagram and really relax into using social media like just another citizen.
I have never gotten into TikTok (thankfully) but I did want to spend far less time online, on my phone and oversharing. I think I’ve done that! Replacing online time with even more reading has been great. Putting my phone on DND mode and leaving it in another room has been even better. And posting only a handful of times, if that, per month on Instagram has been the best. Long may it continue.





Spending plenty of time with friends
I’ve written a handful of times about my insecurities and struggles with friendships. From losing a best friend to being soft-launched out of a friendship group, I felt like I’d seen it all and decided that I wasn’t built for friendship – not in the expected sense, anyway. The post-pandemic years have taught me that that isn’t the case at all. This year, in particular, I wanted to make sure I saw my friends more because IRL interactions are pretty unbeatable. And I am so glad that I’ve spent plenty of time with them all.
Starting a new job!
I started my new job in late September and it’s been a really positive transition for me. While I was desperately sad to leave my dream role at Stella McCartney, my time there taught me a lot personally and professionally. My new job has just made that all the more clear and I’m really enjoying working as part of a creative studio, not directly in marketing, and with a wonderful work-life balance that actually balances.




Returning to my studies
2023 also marked the year that I gave myself the time to return to some studying. It was easy to neglect this when self-employed, but returning to full-time employment in 2022 reminded me that it’s good to up-skill. This year, I enrolled in – and passed! – two courses in fashion and sustainability, and I’m looking forward to developing more professional skills in 2024. Or maybe just more courses about trees…
I worked on myself
Still therapist-less, I worked on myself independently throughout 2023. For much of the year, I took my foot off the public pedal and focused on improving myself 1% every day. That looked like: staying consistent with exercise, nourishing myself with whole foods, listening to my intuition when it came to my spare time in the evenings, looking after my space, noticing my own habits and triggers and slowly working through them… I’m really happy with how far I came this year, especially after reading old journal entries and seeing how I ‘dealt’ with things in May, for instance, versus last week.





Thank you all so much for being a part of my 2023 – here’s to another wonderful year.