Hello friends and a very happy new year to all of you!! I hope you had a wonderful time celebrating and ringing in the new year! I am out on the west coast and lets just say that jet lag is hitting me pretty hard, after staying up for new years.
Every year, when a new year starts, I find myself like everyone else, looking back at the year that was. The ebb and flow of 2017, has left me with mixed feelings given that it was filled with both accomplishments for me, but also a great amount of stress on our family with one of our family members being diagnosed with cancer. We ended 2017 on the other side of that dreaded disease, but when I look back at last year, I can only classify it as “before cancer” or “after cancer”. Everything else that happened is always relative to those terms, and I am so very grateful that we entered the “after cancer” phase on December 26th, 2017. We have 2018 to look forward to as a new year, filled with endless possibilities for both love, joy and health.
Personally, for me, this year is a critical year in my professional life. I have my very first interview out here on the west coast, tomorrow bright and early. I will be working hard towards finishing my dissertation and defending my PhD in THIS summer (feels unreal to even type that out). And before any of that, I will know in February, if I got a spot for residency (fingers crossed that I get a spot in the first round) and whether it will require uprooting half my family and moving across the country.
This year is filled with lots of opportunity for me and my family in every possible way. We have many plans for travel, since we chose not to last year. We have some big decisions ahead of us, and this is the year that I am going to focus on me and what makes me happy and will get me success in the future, so I can finish school and be out in the world as a professional. So I can, contribute in a meaningful way and support my rock of a husband, who is always pushing me to be the best and do what is best for me. I want to move onto the next phase of my life, outside of school, and look back at my 20’s and feel proud of all my accomplishments. Those are my goals for the new year.
Sadly, the blog and my instgram feed are not my top goals for this year. I want to leave empty spaces in my calendars and not fill them up with photo shoots of a perfectly styled home or outfits. I want to have room to just be with my daughter, who is growing up too fast. I want to put my phone down, disengage from the world of social media, and move my eyes up to what is infront of me – my beautiful family, whose moments I am missing because I have been too busy trying to keep up with it all.
That is not to say that I am not coming back – I have some great content planned for this year. But since this is not my profession or a main source of income, 2018 brings with it the decision that something has to be put on the back burner, for now at least. There is no such thing as balancing it all, and there is grace in accepting that and making the most of it.
I hope to see you around here – I am still active on social media with Instagram stories and posts now and then, and love engaging with you all. But I may be a bit slower than usual, in getting back to you.
I hope you have a wonderful new year, friends and it is filled with every thing that you want!
Hugs!
Areeba
[…] In 2018 word of the year was “balance“. […]