By Victoria Q

This is the first time I write a recap of a year. After getting inspired by some amazing people, I’m doing one to review my accomplishment this year.

Found Real Passion

I’m very proud to say I’ve found my real passion for life this year. I’ve been searching and feeling stuck throughout the journey. I asked myself numerous times “What do I want to achieve?” “What am I best at?” “What can I do in my life?” but the answers seem to be nowhere in my head.

I quit my job 2 years ago and moved back to my hometown. Since then, I stayed with my parents. I took a break for about 2 months before deciding to get back to work life. Unfortunately, the sudden hit of the pandemic and national lockdown happened, so I continued staying at home for another 6 months. I have nothing to do at that time so, I begin to find my real passion in life. I took plenty of online self-assessment tests, asked around my friends and families, read motivational books, but I still couldn’t figure it out.

After being jobless and staying at home for 8 months, I realized I’ve used almost all my savings. I’m going to be broken if I don’t get a job soon. So, I just applied for any job I can find and that’s how I landed my current job.

Around September this year, I found my real passion in life… Writing!

My Website: http://www.searchlifestyles.com

I first joined WordPress on 10 June 2020 as a hobby. My only intention was to keep records of my recipes so I can review them anytime I want. I’m a note-taker, but I don’t like to keep my recipes in a book. Sometimes I even forget what recipes I had inside the book. Also, I need to re-correct the recipes if any changes cause the notebook to look messy.

Keeping it in a free blog is a lot more convenient. Re-correcting as many times as I want, and it still looks perfect as ever. Also, I can attach a picture of the final result to remind myself of how it looks at the end.

I wasn’t active in my blog for about 9 months due to work.

One day, I’ve got people “like” my posts. That shocked me. I’ve never thought there’s someone in the world that willing to stop and spend their time reading my posts. That’s awesome!

I got inspired by that and started to get back on my blog. I set a goal to write one post per week, then two posts per week, then three posts per week, and so on.

The more I write, the more I find my love in writing. Yes! I just remembered that I actually love writing than ever.

Up until now, I uploaded 40 articles about self-help, 24 recipes for vegan and non-vegan, 11 essays about my life stories. I’m trying my best to make a career transition to writing. It’s a long journey, and I don’t care how long it takes because there’s nothing that can stop me from writing anymore.

Medium

I joined Medium platform in October 2021. I’ve uploaded 37 posts so far. Medium is a great platform to connect with other amazing writers around the world. I shared my articles and received feedback, and that’s the most meaningful thing I’ve ever found after joining Medium.

Before joining Medium, I still find myself lazing around when it comes to writing. I love writing, but sometimes I run out of ideas and some other times I write 3-4 days a week. Despite that, I managed to keep on with my goal of posting 2-3 times each week.

But everything changed after I joined Medium. Writers here don’t take a break. They posted frequently, and some even posted every single day. Honestly, I seriously don’t know how they managed to find ideas to write every day.

Then, I find inspiration when I read their limitless articles every day. This leads me to build a habit of writing every single day.

Veganism

I created 20 vegan recipes that are officially dedicated to my website. I love food, and that’s the best way to nourish my body. They said, “Good Food equals Good Mood”. My goal is to create simple and quick vegan recipes for busy people that want to eat healthier but do not have much time on hand.

I made the decision to cut down on meat and go vegan. I’m not a full vegan yet, but I have the intention to do so. I decided to go vegan 4 days a week from Monday to Thursday and non-vegan days from Friday to Sunday. I’ve also eliminated certain foods from my diets, such as honey, egg, yogurt, duck, pork, lamb, and beef.

I’m also making the effort to swap my skincare and makeup products into cruelty-free and vegan. I’m now experimenting with different vegan products that work the best on my skin.

Courses

After figuring out I wanted to do something with my writing for life, I went on Google to do more research about copywriting because the word “copywriting” was all I had seen before that’s related to writing, but I don’t exactly know anything about it.

That’s how the AWAI website popped up at that time. So, I clicked on the website and read the free information available. And the magical moment started here… I got more and more involved with the website.

I joined their membership club called The Barefoot Writer. I joined their private Facebook group that is only dedicated to members. I also joined one of their courses to improve my newsletter writing skills recently.

Minimalism

I tried and failed minimalism back in 2019 because I did it the wrong way. I had misconceptions about minimalism. I thought minimalism is a lifestyle with everything in white and only can own a certain number of possessions. So, I had everything changed into white and got rid of almost everything, including the things I use frequently.

At first, I tried to achieve a certain number of possessions I can only own. After achieved the number, I set another number lesser than the previous, and the next time even lesser till I got rid of almost everything. I thought I can’t even own a TV if I’m a minimalist, so I sent it back to my mum (I lived far away from my family at that time).

But I don’t feel happy at all after achieving the number. I feel rather empty inside and outside.

This year I did more research about minimalism. I re-evaluate what minimalism means to me and why I want to approach minimalism. After figuring out the answers and priorities, I decided to re-approach minimalism.

Read more about minimalism:

I Failed and Re-approach Minimalism

Why I Want to Re-approach Minimalism?

How I Re-approach Minimalism

Looking Ahead to 2022

I’ve set some goals for 2022, which I’ll share in the next post. One of them is I’ll take real actions for career transition. I’m going to find projects to work on as a freelance content writer. I’ve outlined some methods and will make good use of them. I also will continue blogging as frequent as I can on Medium and my website.