Well, 2017. You weren’t the best.

The year started out pretty well, actually. New Years was great, and in the first part of the year, Lee visited and we went to Belgium, Faye visited, I got placed in Granada for the coming year, spent Semana Santa in Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. It was a great Winter/Spring, and such a fantastic time in life.

Things since then haven’t been nearly so happy. I haven’t posted about it, but in June Gareth’s mom was diagnosed with cancer. I moved to the UK a few days later, and unfortunately the cancer was incredibly aggressive and she passed away at the end of June–only a few weeks after diagnosis. There aren’t really words to describe what it’s like to watch someone get sick so quickly, or watch the person you love lose their mom, so I’m not going to try. But suffice to say, it was and still is hard on a daily basis.

We moved back to London from G’s mom’s house at the end of July, and I got a full time job in a sector I love. However, the plan was never to settle down long term, and as it looked like the plan to travel was getting further and further away, I was finding it harder and harder to be content with life in London–not to mention Gareth and I finally moved in together under the most stressful circumstances imaginable. Life has been hard and sad lately, though I have hope it’s getting a bit brighter each day.

I try to keep things relatively happy on this blog, hence the lack of posts for much of this year. But the reality is, the second half of 2017 was not nice, and sometimes that’s life. Things aren’t great all the time, and there will be seasons where you just need to survive.

So, 2017 had some highs as well as lows. I’m quite ready for the year to be over, and here’s to a happier 2018!