A drawing of Ana holding a phone and taking a photo of a cat who is washing itself. The cat says, suprised, oh, hello Ana.

OhHelloAna.blog

Jottings from Ana Rodrigues

Oh Hello 2017

As promised, 2016 was the year I signed up to the gym. This is likely to be the biggest change in my life last year since it made me to start making more conscious decisions regarding the food I ate and my health. It had an huge impact in me.

Last year was shit. I moved to London in 2015 (because my partner is English) and last June was a proper kick in the stomach. Half of the population reduced me, an immigrant, to a sterotype that they themselves had built (the TV show about living on benefits is a great example) and all my contributions (taxes, donations etc) were nothing. Moving here was emotionally hard but I did settle. Unwanted here, yet staying.

Politics in 2016 turned me into quite an angry person. An angry person with no power to change anything. No tweet of mine, blog post or petition signature will change anything so I have just given up on all that. I've deleted Facebook from my phone and I've only been using Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram. I do use Twitter for the sake of tech posts.

During the whole year I had anger, fear (of my future) and anxiety building up to a point that even sleeping became difficult and by the end of the year I resigned at my job to try to have a fresh start of 2017 somewhere else.

But not everything was bad. I keep bringing up my two trips to Finland (post 1 and post 2) as the best moments of 2016. Besides that, it is really hard to mention any highlight of 2016.

As for 2017, I have a couple of goals:

  • Learning more about minimalism: my word for 2017 is declutter. Own the minimum I need and avoid buying stuff to the maximum possible;
  • Reduce social media usage;
  • Be more environmental friendly;
  • Post more in this blog;
  • Do volunteering;
  • Continue to go to the gym;
  • Be more thankful;

I wish everyone a happy and healthy 2017.

Send me a message about this post

Messages sent via the following form will not be published.

Read more posts

Stonehenge, Castle Combe and Bath in one day

Vesala Live