My 2023 in Review

 Woosh! It's the last day of 2023 and boy, has it been A YEAR!!!!!!!!!!

I've wondered what format I want to share this post in - a Life Lately format? Taking Stock? A Good, Bad, and Ugly one? Highlights and Lowlights? I want to be sure that I capture everything without writing an entire novel. I think I'll break it up into different sections and go with the flow of my thoughts. I might just do them "Bullet Journal" style, so that I can cover more ground.

TRAVEL

Oh the places I saw this year!!!! Listen, 2023 was my year of travel. I didn't quite hit a few places that I would have liked to visit but I had some epic trips!

• New Orleans - I went on a train trip to New Orleans with my sister, cousin and our children. Yes, we went via Amtrak and it was a journey that we won't soon forget. I really should have written a blog post (and hopefully will someday). 
  
  
• Chicago - One of the benefits those of us with Delta American Express Platinum credit cards have is a complimentary companion ticket. The credit card fee is $250 a year, so I've tried to make sure that when I use the complimentary companion ticket, the value is around the same price or higher. I checked out the Delta Current Flight Deals page and decided to take Coco on a Mother-Daughter trip to Chicago in between our birthdays. We got to spend alone time together and explore Chicago to our hearts' delight! (Again, I should have written a blog post... oops)
  
  
• San Juan, Puerto Rico - There is nothing anybody can say, OLD SAN JUAN has my heart!!! Again, using the Delta Current Flight Deals page, I scooped a great ticket price and headed to San Juan on a solo trip! At least I managed to share this trip on Youtube (but I should share photos and my itinerary here as well)
  
  
• Italy, Greece, and Croatia - My sister turned 40 this year and to celebrate, she had 3 separate trips - all in September! I chose to forego going with her and our friends to Las Vegas, and also the trip to Puerto Rico (because I was already going solo). But the Royal Caribbean Cruise that would have us visiting Italy, Greece and Croatia was a no-brainer!!!!! It wasn't the whole entire family that went, but those of us that did, had the trip of a lifetime!!!!! (yeah yeah yeah, no blog post, et cetera)

COCO

Can y'all believe my little lady is a whole 6.5 years old now?!?!?!?! Imagine the child we all prayed and begged God for is now this very spunky, hilarious, talkative little madam. I really and truly believe that God put me on earth to be her mother. The amount of love I have for her sometimes is so overwhelming. Being her mother is a delight and joy! Some updates about her:

• She got accepted into the Gifted program at school. She took the assessments while in Kindergarten and passed (apparently, it's not common at all!). 
  
  
• She's wearing glasses now!!! Like her father and me, she has some astigmatism and needs glasses to see clearly. She was happy to get them and picked out her frames herself. 
  
  
• She wants a stepfather.

LOVE

That was a good segue into this portion of my 2023 recap, right? Yes, your internet niece wants her mom to get remarried [and have another child]. She asked multiple times this year when I will get married again. It's not so much because her father has remarried, but more because she wants a sibling FROM ME. Err, I'm not sure about the sibling bit, but I would like to get married in the future.

That being said, I shared on my Youtube channel about Dating After Divorce. You can check out that video - here

Listen, I gave app dating a go, and I don't know that it's for me. I tried Hinge at first and after a month, I dropped it. My friend offered to pay for Stir (a dating app targeted towards single parents), and while I had multiple starts and conversations, nothing materialized into any dates/physical meetups. 

To be very honest, I think someone like Sima Aunty (aka Indian Matchmaker) would be a good option for divorced/"older" single people. Having someone do the background work of collecting information about a person, who they're looking for, and knowing that the ultimate goal is a relationship leading to marriage... I think it's an awesome premise!

Either that, or getting together with someone that you already know from your past. You may not have dated them, but at least you know who they are, where they're coming from, and there's familiarity. But you both would need to be on the same page and have the same values. 

All this to say that I attempted dating this year, it didn't go great, and I'm still Single. 

P.S. My sister says I should be open to long-distance relationships and men that are around 50. She might have a point or two. 

CAREER

This year has been weird for me career-wise. I spent years trying to get into the HR field of work, and now that I've been working as an HR Professional for a year and half, I'm trying to figure out if I want to stay in HR, or maybe find my footing within HR. I enjoy the flexibility my current job affords me, even though we're back in the office 4 days a week. But I'm finding myself feeling a little discontent and wanting more. In the past 5 years at the organization where I work, I've had 4 different roles, and so this current job I have is the longest I've stayed in one position. I'm hoping for more clarity and movement forward and upward in 2024!

MOMMY OYOYO

Oh, my other baby. See enh, Mommy Oyoyo cannot just be a Berry dream. I don't believe so. I really and truly think that it's God's plan for me as well, but I keep fumbling. I wanted to restart the podcast this year, and I only managed 2 or 3 episodes. I don't know what/why I couldn't seem to move forward with it, and yet I have my podcast notebook full of episode ideas and topics that I know NEED to be covered. Y'all please pray for and with me that I do what needs to be done to get Mommy Oyoyo back up and running. 

HEALTH (PHYSICAL)

I did NOT lose weight. Actually, that's not true. I did lose weight at a point, but then I gained it back towards the end of the year. This year, I went back to the gym (our office gym is pretty nice) but I was NOT consistent for a long time, and plus I kept eating and eating and eating and eating. In Jesus name, 2024 will be the year I get back and stay under the 200lbs mark (I don't look it, but still).

HEALTH (MENTAL)

To be very honest, this year has been one kind. There have been good times but also just really low low times. Around the beginning of the year, there was a loss in the family and it hit me hard. It took quite a bit of time to move through the emotions, and honestly, the thoughts of that time still come to me here and there, and I get sad again. 

Toward the end of the year, I struggled mentally/emotionally. There were a lot of hidden tears. There were more than a few nights when I just couldn't get out of the funk/fog I was in. I know I should have scheduled some therapy sessions and prayed more, but I just couldn't. All I could do was just cry myself to sleep. I'm in a better place now, thank God. I think it was a combination of feeling exhausted (being a single working mom to a child with a lot of extracurricular activities), and also feeling a little lonely (I'm not ashamed to admit feeling loneliness sometimes). My plan to tackle this in 2024 is pre-schedule therapy sessions at least once a month!

Whew! This is a lot more writing than I thought I had in me, but it was good to get it out. I want to blog more in 2024, and even though I read that nobody wants bloggers to share their thoughts and opinions as opposed to "teaching," I'll still share my experiences here. 

Happy New Year to you and yours!!!