2018 in review

3 minute read

Whenever I look back at the recent past, I often forget a lot of the things I’ve done, or gloss over them in my thoughts and don’t give them the personal significance they really deserve. Consequently, I thought I’d make a summary post of some of the different things I’ve done in 2018 to remind myself of some of what I’ve accomplished and how much I’ve grown.

I’ll also take a moment to apologise in advance — this post is pretty much me bragging about myself. Feel free to skip it. I won’t be offended.

Travel

In 2018, I took a total of 29 flights covering a distance of approximately 65,290 kilometres. This is equivalent to travelling around the equator one and a half times! The airports I’ve travelled through are Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, London, Melbourne, Queenstown, Singapore, Sydney.

I visited a total of 15 countries. This does include some day-trips where I didn’t actually spend the night. Plus, as a tourist, I only really got to see the touristy parts of these places so for many of them I don’t really consider them “explored”. They are Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Principality of Monaco, Singapore, Slovenia, Switzerland, Vatican City State.

Exercise

I really stepped up my exercise level in 2018 compared to 2017. According to my Garmin device stats, I recorded a total of 68 activities covering 363km and 56 hours burning 28,000 calories. I took nearly 3.4 million steps and covered over 2,700 kilometres by foot. As part of this, I participated in a number of runs of reasonably significant length: three half marathons, the 14km City2Surf, two 10km runs, and twenty-seven 5km parkruns.

2019 promises to be an even bigger year for distance activities, if my rough calendar is anything to go by.

Adventures

I pushed myself way out of my comfort zone on my trip to Queenstown, New Zealand. I went bungy jumping from the Nevis, skydiving from 15,000 ft, did the Shotover Canyon Swing and Canyon Fox, tried my hand at via ferrata and then canyoning in the Routeburn canyon, undertook the Queenstown Half Marathon and even more.

Personal milestones

Lastly, there were also a few big personal milestones for me. After six intense years of study and work, I graduated from university and managed to achieve First Class Honours in the process. This was an achievement I hadn’t even thought about for much of my degree. At long last, I moved out of home just before Christmas. While I’ve lived out of home before, this time it isn’t for a fixed duration. Lastly, it might seem self-evident if you’re reading this, but I set up a personal domain, blog, and email services.

I’ll also note here my travel and adventure activities. While I have travelled before, almost all of it has been both domestic and with other people. This year I pushed my boundaries by travelling solo and travelling internationally for an extended period. Similarly, I’m not known as much of an adventurous ‘risk taker’ so I tackled that my throwing myself into an assortment of activities to which I had a reflex ‘no thanks’ reaction.

That’s it

That’s it for the review, for now. I’m not completely satisfied with the analysis I’ve done so I’ll likely come back to it in the future, but as I have half a dozen draft posts sitting here I’ll publish this one now to reduce the queue.