2022: A Year in Review

Welcome to 2023! As is tradition around here, I’m starting this new year by looking back at all of the highs, lows and in-betweens of the last year. Overall, 2022 was a pretty good one. While it may not have had the same milestones as previous years when I got married or moved abroad, looking back I can count so many wonderful 2022 memories.

I think 2022 was about getting back to normal and settling into a life I love and am very happy to lead. I can’t say I wouldn’t have wanted to travel more – I always do – but considering how travel felt so far away in 2020 and even 2021, I’d say this past year was a big step in the right direction. And when I wasn’t travelling, I got to spend my time writing, hanging out with loved ones and planning my next move – all things I love to do!

So let’s dive into my 2022 review.

2022: A year in review

January

2022 started strong with our family trip to Kauai, Hawaii. We saw beautiful landscapes, enjoyed sunny days on the beach, and ate the most amazing food. Unfortunately, we also found out in January that our Yaletown apartment was being put up for sale.

February

With the news of our home sale, we tried to embrace our neighbourhood as much as we could in February, not knowing how much longer we’d get to call it home. We went to the local hot chocolate festival and started trying new Yaletown restaurants. We also had to put up with a bunch of realtor viewings as our apartment was on the market, which was not fun.

March

In March we got to hang out with Colin’s cousins and take the aquabus over to Granville Island, go to two Canucks games, and start setting up our patio. While we didn’t travel, I did spend time making online photo books of our past travels, which was so much fun! We also learned that our apartment had sold and the new landlords wanted to keep us on as tenants…or so we thought.

April

My favourite moment of April was a spa weekend at the Tigh-Na-Mara resort in Parksville with some co-workers. It was so fun to have a girls’ weekend and feel pampered at the spa. Back in Vancouver we enjoyed a big family dinner for Colin’s Uncle George, headed up Grouse Mountain with my mom, and borrowed Colin’s mom’s car for a weekend of errands, including buying a new couch.

May

May was a busy month! We visited New York City and had the best time attending Broadway shows and checking out museums. Once we returned, we got to catch up with lots of family: Fanny Bay Oysters with my cousin Kaitlyn, Mother’s Day brunch with Colin’s mom and aunt, and homemade dinners with my great aunt and uncle from Chicago.

June

In June we got to see Hamilton as my mom had gotten us tickets as an early birthday present for me. We also headed up to Golden Ears Park for a family birthday and hosted the first BBQ on our patio. (I miss that patio!)

July

July was a big month! We headed out to Pender Harbour for our annual family visit. Back in the city I got to hang out with my Auntie Hayley (visiting from Calgary) and my friend Mireille (visiting from the UK). We went to a Jason Mraz concert with my mom and I turned 30, celebrating with a stroll through VanDusen Gardens and a fancy seafood dinner.

Sadly, July also saw Colin and I getting covid (luckily after my birthday!). And our upstairs neighbours had a leak, which caused huge water damage in our unit. We had inspectors and repair people visiting constantly trying to assess and fix the issues.

August

August was another big month. We had a belated birthday dinner for me at Seasons in the Park and then another big family dinner with visiting relatives out in Richmond. Colin and I managed to fit in three shows (Celeste Barber, Come From Away, We Will Rock You) and a baseball game. And that was all before we flew to Toronto for my friend Lea’s wedding and lots of great catch-ups with friends and family.

Sadly, our landlords also informed us in August that they would be ending our tenancy as they planned to move into the apartment themselves. With the extensive repair work needed due to the water damage, they offered to let us move out early so we wouldn’t have to stay there through the renovation. We decided to take them up on it.

September

As soon as we got back from Toronto, we started packing. The first two weeks of September were a stressful, chaotic and sad flurry of packing, organizing, moving, storing and more. We moved out of our apartment, put most of our stuff in storage, and headed off for 10 days in Europe!

I was so excited to bring Colin back to Amsterdam, where I had studied abroad in 2014. After Amsterdam, we spent a few wonderful days in Brussels and Ghent before flying back home from Paris.

October

Having moved out of our apartment before our trip, we landed back in Vancouver and moved into a temporary home for the next two months, thanks to our very kind family. While we were so grateful to have a place to live, it was tough feeling so unsettled. We also had the stress of finding a new apartment, which meant lots of viewings and scrolling through Craigslist. Luckily, we found a great place!

We also hosted our first Thanksgiving in October and it went well!

November

November started with a family dinner in Port Coquitlam where we got to catch up with Colin’s dad’s side, seeing Jesus Christ Superstar, and watching a Canucks game. At the end of the month, we moved into our new home! While it was stressful to pack up and move again, it felt so nice to be in a place of our own.

December

December was all about settling into our new place and getting ready for the holidays. I loved unpacking, getting organized and decorating. It feels so nice to look around and see our photos on the walls and little mementos that mean so much to us. We also scored some awesome free furniture pieces – stay tuned for a house tour post to check them all out.

December also saw a few freezing cold days in Vancouver that essentially shut down the city. Some of our plans were cancelled but for the most part, we were able to stay warm, safe and unaffected – save for a few icy dog walks! The snow melted just as we began celebrating Christmas, which was a low-key and lovely holiday with family in Vancouver.

Blogging wins in 2022

2022 was a really great year for Teaspoon of Adventure and I’m so proud of how my blog has grown. I’m certainly not a full time blogger or making a big income from this blog, but it’s moving in the right direction.

My top blog post of 2022: 5 Day Cabot Trail Itinerary on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

A few blogging highlights of the year include:

• Hitting 11K+ followers on Twitter & interacting with the awesome community there
• Collaborating with brands and tourism boards
• Signing up for KeySearch and getting more intentional about the posts I write
• (Slowly) starting to update some old blog posts that need a refresh

While I’m proud of the ways in which I’ve treated this blog more like a business, I’m also really glad that I still write for me. I enjoy writing and I’m always going to write posts that I want to write first and foremost. Of course, I want this blog to be useful for others but I know some posts (like this one!) are more for me and my loved ones than someone planning a trip.

Career wins in 2022

I’m feeling pretty good about the state of my content writing career in 2022. I didn’t make any huge moves but I did have some great wins and feel good going into a new year. A few of my work wins include:

• Raising my rates with all of my clients
• Better refining my work so it’s work I’m good at and enjoy doing
• Always having work to do (not usually the case for freelancers!)
• Buying a new computer monitor that is gigantic!

I feel like I had a better work-life balance in 2022 than in previous years. I revamped a few of my work projects so I wouldn’t need to be on my phone to do social media. I’ve felt a lot more in control over my hours and I think I’ve set some healthy boundaries. That being said, I did end 2022 feeling pretty burnt out and lacking in motivation, so I want to continue to work on the balance heading into 2023!

2022 on the home front

After some pretty huge years – moving to Prague in 2019, coming home and getting engaged in 2020, getting married and honeymooning in 2021 – 2022 was not as momentous. But 2022 was still a great year on the home front. I made some progress on healthy habits and medical appointments, went out to more live events and on date nights, got our finances in a good place, and spent time with friends and family.

Of course, the biggest life update from 2022 was our big move. The last few months of the year just felt so stressful and unsettled as we had to leave our beautiful Yaletown apartment, move into a temporary place, and search for a new home.

Finally, after moving into our new place in late November, I felt like I could exhale. As we settled in over the next few weeks, I found myself feeling less anxious, more rooted and at peace for the first time in a few months. I’m so happy with our new place and so glad we found it when we did.

Best reads of 2022

As you may have seen in my monthly review posts, I did not read as much in 2022 as I have in past years. In fact, I only read 16 books the whole year! In contrast, I read 40 in 2019, 71 in 2020, and 51 in 2021. I’m hoping to get back on track in 2023. But of the 16 books I read in 2022, here were my favourites:

• One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
• The Guncle by Steven Rowley
• The Catch Me If You Can by Jessica Nabongo

Best watches of 2022

While I didn’t read much in 2022, I sure did watch a lot of TV! Colin and I watched a scary number of TV shows and movies this year, so I had a hard time narrowing down my favourites. On my (not so) short list for best TV show are:

• Upload
• Abbott Elementary
• Inventing Anna
• Single Parents
• Girls5Eva
• Travel Man
• The Good Place
• Survivor South Africa
• The Mentalist
• Jane the Virgin

2022 Travel

In 2022, I travelled to:

• Kauai, Hawaii
• New York City, New York
• Pender Harbour & Parksville, BC
• Toronto, Ontario
• Paris, France
• Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Brussels & Ghent, Belgium

For more on these trips, check out my top 10 travel moments of 2022! 

Looking back on my 2021 predictions for 2022

One of my favourite parts of my annual year in review posts is looking back on the previous year’s post and seeing what I predicted would happen this year – i.e. what I said back in Dec 2021 would happen in 2022. Then I get to go through the predictions and see what came true (or not)!

Work

The prediction: I predicted I’d get reinvigorated about my client work, raise my rates and sign some new clients. I also predicted I would start up something entrepreneurial and develop a signature writing service.

How’d I do? I definitely felt more inspired about my client work and refined what I do. I also raised my rates, which has been awesome! However, I did not start up something entrepreneurial or develop a signature writing service. I’m still kicking around both of those ideas in my head, but haven’t found anything I truly want to pursue yet.

Home

The prediction: I predicted that 2022 would see me discovering my Yaletown neighbourhood, enjoying more date nights and making the most of our awesome patio. I also wanted to make some progress on our financial goals.

How’d I do? I think I did pretty good here! While we didn’t go on as many date nights as I may have wanted, we did make an effort to try new restaurants and go out to events. We also did make the most of Yaletown and our patio, while we had it. And happy to report our financial goals are also looking good!

Blog

The prediction: In 2022 I wanted to publish weekly on Teaspoon of Adventure, grow my readership, partner with brands and make money from my blog.

How’d I do? I’m thrilled to be ending the year with some blog income and collaborations under my belt. I don’t know if my audience grew too much, so will have to do a better job of tracking that next year. I also did not publish weekly, but have decided that’s something I’m going to give myself grace with. I would rather take weeks off when I don’t feel like writing than force myself to put together sub-par posts – quality over quantity!

Travel

The prediction: I predicted 2022 would be the year I got my passport stamped again! I knew we had our Kauai (January 2022) and Toronto (August 2022) trips booked and thought we’d end up in Europe or Japan in fall 2022.

How’d I do? I nailed it! The travel category is always easier for me to predict as we usually have trips booked in advance (except for my 2019 travel predictions for 2020 – I don’t think anyone predicted covid was coming!). We did go to Kauai, Toronto and then Europe in the fall, plus a bonus trip to New York City in May. We didn’t make it to Japan but I’m hoping to get back there soon!

Predictions & goals for 2023

Every year I struggle with whether or not I want to set goals or make resolutions. Some years I’m really into it, some years I swear off of it. Some years I set mini goals and other years I just set an intention. While there’s nothing magical about January for goal setting, it is a nice time to reflect and reset.

This year I decided to do a modified version of the 4 Ls exercise. I went through different categories of my life (work, blog, travel, etc) and wrote down things I liked in 2022 and things I long for in 2023. That allowed me to focus on the positives of 2022 and create a new vision for the year ahead.

From there, I created a shorter list of goals, about 2-3 under each category. I still think that might be too many goals to focus on in a single year, but the exercise of developing them was really useful.  Even if I don’t make progress on all of my goals, it was helpful to intentionally think about what I want the next year to look like.

Below are a few of the goals I’m working on for 2023. Since this is the predictions part of the post, and because I want to be optimistic, I’ve phrased them all as “I will” statements.

Work

I will work outside the house x1 per week. I work from home (which I love) but end up spending way too much time inside the house. It will be nice to get out and network with other freelancers or just work from a coffee shop for a change of scenery.

I will take off the week between Christmas and New Year’s and do no work. By the end of 2022, I was feeling a little burnt out and envious of people who got to close their laptops on the 23rd and not reopen them until the new year. This year, I will be those people!

I will raise my rates and/or take on 1+ new client. I want to continue growing in my career, taking on new projects and getting paid fairly for my work.

Blog

I will double my page views. The first step to this goal is finding out what my current page views are at! So I guess a side goal here would be figuring out my blog analytics and setting up Google Analytics 4 before the summer.

I will collaborate with 5+ brands. I collaborated with a few tourism boards and brands in 2022 and want to continue that into 2023. In fact, I have my first fully sponsored stay coming up this month!

I will hit my income goal. I have an income goal set for Teaspoon of Adventure and would love to hit it in 2023 through affiliates, collaborations and sponsorships. Speaking of, you can help me get there by supporting this blog!

Home

I’ve broken “home” into quite a few subcategories with goals for each:

• Health: I will keep my phone out of the bedroom while I sleep & get back into YouTube workouts.
• Loved ones: I will host more people at our house.
• Marriage: I will go on weekly date nights with my husband (phone-free!).
• Finances: I will hit my savings & investment goals.
• Personal: I will get back into reading.
• House: I will get to know our new neighbourhood and make use of our patio in the summer.

Travel

I will travel to the UK in January, New Zealand in April, and somewhere international in October. Most of these trips are booked (or my husband at least has the days off work) so I’m assuming this prediction will come true. But it’s still fun to write down!

I will see my family from Toronto. Whether that’s a trip to Toronto, family visiting us here in Vancouver or meeting up somewhere else in the world, I’d love to see more of my Toronto family in 2023.

I will go on 2-4 local getaways. With our big trips for the year planned, I’d love to still schedule in a few local getaways. It’s hard with a dog, no car and my husband’s limited vacation days, but I’m hoping we can go on some overnight or weekend trips this year.

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Well there you have it – 2022 in the books and big plans ahead for 2023! How was 2022 for you? And what predictions or goals do you have for 2023?