The Final Chapter ✨
- Domi
- Dec 7, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 31, 2024
Of 2024 that is.
Maybe not even the final chapter, I might feel inspired to write more in 2024, but I like the dramatic effect.
As much as I hate resolutions, I do like to reflect on a year that has passed and look at the lessons I learned from it but also what I want to leave behind and take with me to the next year (according to our perception of time at least).
Let’s start with the word I chose for 2024:
TO GROUND.
My mission was to find solid and heathy soil to start growing some roots.
And now let’s find out if I manifested that correctly, shall we?
I’ll start with summarising the events in my life over the past year:
JANUARY
This year started in Lombok, Indonesia for me.
With great optimism and patience (at times, I really shouldn’t give myself that much grace but you gotta love the hindsight, right?) I was awaiting my student visa to be approved and before that happened, I wanted to treat myself to a trip overseas which wasn’t possible once my bridging visa would start early January. I would be “trapped” in Australia until my student visa was approved.
I was in Indonesia with a man who was very special to me at that time. That "situation" pretty much ended after that trip, though.
At that time, I was living in Marino Rocks, a suburb in Adelaide and I wasn’t convinced about the shared living situation in someone else’s house. But I didn’t have an alternative at the time.
FEBRUARY
Things were shifting in February. I started making new friends through school where we were getting face-to-face classes for the first time since I started the course in October.
I dated another man and that was a nice end of summer fling.
The visa pending status was coming up to 5 months near the end of the month and the frustration about it kept coming and going in waves.
I harvested quite a few things from my garden bed and I was making plans to start WWOOF-ing to cut back on costs until I was legally allowed to work.
And I decided to move out of the shared house a couple of weeks earlier than planned and ended up staying with someone I met on the train a couple of months prior for 2 weeks.
MARCH
I moved into a caravan early March. A caravan on a property in Aldinga Beach.
Hands down, the best place I’ve ever lived in my life.
Kangaroos everywhere, sunsets to die for and a coastline that just kept putting a smile on my face.
I met beautiful people in the local community, was invited to join a Lomi Lomi massage retreat, went to the farmer’s markt with my beautiful neighbour on the property every Saturday morning, and started a veggie garden on the property.
However, there was a flip side. I still was on a bridging visa without working rights, and I was trying hard to stay sane over the fact that I didn’t have any financial power anymore. I was fully dependant on my parent’s financial aid for which I am ever grateful, but I did feel hopeless at times.
My visa was finally approved by the end of March.
APRIL
With great enthusiasm and optimism, I started looking for a casual job in and around Aldinga Beach.
The hardest part was over. Or so I thought.
The relieve of the visa grant letter coming in lasted exactly 20 minutes before my brain started planning ahead and before I knew it, I was pressuring myself into finding a job.
Without any success.
Meanwhile, I was still busy meeting more people in the local community, helped out in their gardens and digging trenches and slowly getting some digital marketing clients too.
I was absolutely loving the outdoor life and getting my hands dirty combined with some computer work.
MAY
May started with a tiny trip to Melbourne to stay with one of my friends in the mountains after which I moved into a new place for the third time since the beginning of the year.
Winter was coming and it was getting cold in the caravan. When I was helping out a friend in his garden and saw he had a furnished room available that was overlooking the garden, I decided to live in that room over winter.
In May I also experienced an intense episode in the days leading up to the full moon combined with my ovulation. Lots of things were happening and I felt so ungrounded it almost drove me mad.
JUNE
A Christmas in June birthday party with my beautiful friend from Estonia and a permaculture design course I was taking for a while.
The permaculture design course was offered to me by a friend I met at the farmer’s markets. I worked a couple of hours in his beautiful garden in exchange for a class. It was a beautiful experience for the short time it lasted (for me, at least).
JULY
I bought a car in July.
My first car purchase ever.
She came into my life to move me from Adelaide to Byron Bay.
Since I wasn’t getting anywhere with the job hunt in Adelaide, and I was getting seriously desperate over it, I reached out to a company I interned at in 2015 in Sydney, and they offered me a job in Byron Bay.
So, I had to move. And so had my stuff.
That’s how my beautiful Ruby entered my life.
AUGUST
This is the month in which the big trip happened.
I travelled from Adelaide to Byron Bay in 7 days with a little break in the dessert.
Once I touched down in Byron Bay, I moved in with a family in a beautiful and big house with a food forest around it.
I could cycle to work and left Ruby on a beautiful grass patch across the street until I needed her to drive me to school in the Gold Coast.
My first shift at the hostel was later that month.
I was finally making money again. After 10+ months of no money coming in.
SEPTEMBER
Everything was new again in September and I was loving it.
The location of my new house, the beach, the new people.
BUT I was struggling to find a real connection with the people in Byron Bay. It didn’t really fit me like everyone thought it would.
OCTOBER
A little trip to Melbourne and Adelaide to get my passport sorted and catch up with friends made me realise I still yearned for Adelaide quite a bit.
I couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to move back over there for a while.
New opportunities were developing at work, though.
And I finished the first year of my Digital Marketing degree.
NOVEMBER
I developed friendships and deeper connections and went on fun adventures. I was loving the life I was living being solo and free to go wherever I wanted in Ruby.
Until that journey came to an end.
Just like the journey of my single gal life.
Dramatic as that may sound, it was a pretty big adjustment for someone who had been single for over 15 years.
But what a great new life experience this turned out to be.
DECEMBER
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
I like the ending of a year because it’s time to wrap things up and use the end of the year as a reason to do it.
So,
I decided to sell my beautiful Ruby to a lovely couple in Brissy who will bring her back to life and care for her in the way she deserves to be cared for.
I decided I'm moving out of my current place when I get back from my trip overseas in March.
I decided to enrol in a new course (actually, I didn’t have much choice in that one since my school went bankrupt, but it all turned out well in the end).
And I decided to work on the issues I developed around intimate relationships throughout my life to make sure I can start 2025 with a healthier mindset and tools to show up like I want to show up in this new relationship.
And finally, I'll sum up the
LESSONS I LEARNED
I can do anything if I put my mind to it.
Oil leaks aren’t fun.
Neither are car batteries and suspension leaks.
Money isn’t everything and at the same time it is.
There is such thing as too many cucumbers. 🥒
There’s still so much to learn and I want to evolve in many areas in my life.
That why I decided my word for 2025 will be
EVOLVE
Let's see where that brings me.
Yay!
That’s it.
Talk soon.
Xoxo,
Domi
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