2024 – New Year, New Life, New Opportunities

A week ago today I arrived in Valencia, my new home for the foreseeable future. Although it hasn’t been long, I’ve adapted well. I think it’s mostly because I found a new apartment right away in the perfect location for me. It’s right between the city centre and the beach. And it’s the first time I’ve spent a whole week in one place since I left my home in Austria eight weeks ago. I still can’t believe it was only eight weeks ago, it feels like I haven’t been there in ages. But due to an upcoming doctor’s appointment I already booked flights to visit in March.

My arrival in Spain couldn’t have been any better. In fact, I expected at least some struggles, but everything went perfect. My flight here from Iceland was pretty exhausting. The first plane left in Reykjavik on the evening of the 30th and arrived in Poland at midnight. I then spent five hours there till my connection flight to Valencia, which arrived at 9 a.m. on the 31st. I was really tired as you can imagine and went straight to my hostel to drop my luggage. Afterwards, my plan was to sleep on the beach a bit. But when I came to the hostel, the receptionist told me, that my bed was already set up, so I was able to check in right away and get some sleep. During midday, my landlady contacted me to pick up the keys and invited me to spend New Year’s Eve with her and her boyfriend in the city centre later that night. After picking up the keys, I checked out the centre a bit, before heading back to the hostel for some more sleep to have enough energy for the night. In my room were two more people and during our conversation, it turned out that one of them was also heading for the celebrations in the centre later. He told me I could join him and his friends on the way there. So I did. As the night developed, the centre became full with people and it was impossible for me to find my landlady. I ended up celebrating the New Year with four strangers. Only life writes stories like these.

The next day, I took my stuff and moved into my studio apartment. I was really happy to completely unpack all my things and not having to live out of a suitcase anymore. I still had the whole week off and used the time to do a free tour of Valencia, visit the Oceanogràfic (the biggest aquarium in Europe), go on dates, sign up for Yoga and boxing, organise my free travel card for pt,take a daily walk to the beach and explore my neighbourhood. Tomorrow I start to work again and will go back to routine. For me bot onky a new year has started but also a new life. Time for some goals.

These are the things I let slide during my trip:

• Workout
  This was intentionally because I knew I wouldn’thave access to my sport equipment or a gym. But I planned to do 10.000 steps per day even on working days and was able to do it most of the time.
  
• Healthy diet
  This wasn’t on purpose but it turned out to be harder than expected to keep up with my diet. Whether it was because not every accommodation had a cooking plate or I only stayed two or three nights and groceries I bought would expire if I kept it in the warm car. A contributing factor was also, that I didn’t have a lot of time to figure out where to buy stuff or to cook, so I often ate instant noodles.
  
• Drinking enough water
  This was the most difficult. I often spent many hours in the car or exploring a city, where toilets weren’t always available. Therfore I intentionally drank less water. My body is used to little water from my past, but I have to admit, that I often didn’t even drink half a litre. I don’t recommend this to anyone because it really isn’t good for your body.

With the new year and new life I entered, I also set some goals. This is the first time in my life, I seriously set some goals for the new year. I usually don’t like to go with commercial trends, but this time it suited my current situation.

Goals for Valencia/2024:

• More self care in terms of moving my body, working out, focusing on my mental health and regular massages to show my body appreciation.
  
• Taking more time for my hobbies like writing, reading, music and social media.
  
• Swimming in the sea as often as I can and walk more often to the beach than I did when I lived in Melbourne.
• Continue my therapy to keep working on a way to manage my eating disorder
  
• Eating less sugar and fat. Originally I planned an experiment to go at least a month without sugar but I try to not be too harsh with myself. It’s an old habit I’m trying to get rid of and could also trigger my eating disorder
  
• Buy more groceries from a local market instead of supermarkets
  
• Taking advantage of all the opportunities life in a city has to offer
  
• Learn Spanish
  
• Spend less time on my phone and looking into digital screens
  
• Continue to write my books and finish one of them

For starters, I set a few goals for next week:

• Find the right yoga class for me (I’m gonna try three different ones)
  
• Try out boxing (I already booked a class)
  
• Slowly ease back into my workout routine and adjust it due to the new opportunities living in a city holds (Like Yoga and boxing classes)
  
• Daily use of DuoLingo to practice Spanish until my books arrive (My Mom sent them from Austria and they’re much more efficient to learn properly)
  
  
• Go back to drink two litres of water or tea daily
  
• Memorise the way from the beach
  
• Read a book at the beach
  
• Lend a Spanish book from a library

The last two are more goals for the month to be honest, but I think I have a good plan and look forward to tick off the list. What are your goals this year?