2011: My Review in pictures

The new year is finally here. And before I look forward to all that I hope to achieve in 2012, I’d like to take a moment to pause and reflect on how 2011 went for me, how successful I was in achieving my goals for the year, and share those thoughts with you. 2010 was a great year, and I look back at it as a comeback year. A year in which I finally conquered and slayed some niggling personal demons, and made small but crucial strides towards becoming a better and much stronger individual, to becoming the kind of person that I want to be.

And so I came into 2011, feeling very positive, more inspired and motivated than I ever have been to build on the foundations I had arduously laid in 2010. I wanted to keep the ball rolling, and take the momentum of 2010 in the next 12 months. And as I look back at the year as a whole? I would say that it was my best year yet! 2011 was the year I came even more alive, and did everything (pretty much) I could have hoped to have done and I began to really reap the benefits of the efforts I had been putting in.

So heres some of my highlights in pictures:

• January – the launch of this blog, (then under the title ‘diamonds of the same stone’) and getting lots of views/positive feedback on my first post
  followed by one of the highlights of my year – successfully organising a sell out cultural show at university in my final year. I remember when I applied for funding, I was laughed at because of the amount of money I asked for and the size of what I wanted to do but I stuck to my guns and thankfully, I have lots of great memories of all the stress and effort it took to pull it off without any hitches, and it was an amazing success. We had lots of societies take part, 2 live artists performing (Akala & Engine Earz) and everyone had a great time – the Chinese Lion dance (which was meant to start the show but they got lost on the way causing all sorts of problems for me backstage lol!!) went down a storm with everyone.

One of my favourite moments from the show for me – I got to ‘wake up’ the sleeping Chinese Lion for its dance, which I was told by the Eagle Claw Kung Fu school team is seen as a mark of great honour and respect in Chinese culture  and I really was touched and privileged that they asked me to be a part of it.

• February  Running in my university student elections, and although I came second, the people I met campaigning and even just the fun I had was one of the highlight moments of the year (doing a flash mob in the library, my campaign video, dressing like a bee on nights out, running around campaigning all day after hardly eating and sleeping – all whilst still doing my 10,000 word dissertation, my awesome campaign team – it was EPIC!)

March

Being given the RUSU award 2010/11 for ‘outstanding commitment’ at the societies ball!

April – May

Dissertation completed! 

Went to Belgium for a little road trip after exams. This is a photo (excuse my hair) of when I was meditating at the ISKCON temple and a little boy came up to me and gave me some flower petals which had been offered to the idol of God. It was a good chance to get away, take a step back and assess how I wanted to move forward in the coming months, post-university. I really like this picture because I was thinking a lot about my ambitions of going into education at the time and it was just a nice kind gesture, the kind you would associate with young children.

June

Summer ball and the end of university.

• July- Sept

Graduation and AUSTRALIA for 3 months!

(walking to school with my cousins, where I did a placement for 2 weeks)

• November & December

Successfully completing Nanowrimo and writing 50,000 words in one month. (I’m now working on my second draft)

So thats it! There’s lots of other things I wanted to add in here but I’d be here forever otherwise, and its time to look forward now.

To finish though, here’s some food for thought.. I want to hear how your 2011 was.

What personal achievements, successes, failures did you face? Post up your own review of 2011 and see how your life looked over the past year in pictures. Was it positive and something you are now proud to look back on? If not, make 2012 the year you succeeded and grew into the kind of person you want to be. What do you have planned for the coming year?

I look forward to hearing from you guys. Happy new year folks.

As I’m sure you have noticed, there have been some small changes on my blog and to hear more about that, look out for my next post which will be up on January 11th. Some exciting things to come!