Why 2013 Was My YOLO Year

2013 was most definitely my YOLO year: YEAR OF LEARNING OVERALL.

My outfit to welcome the New Year

This was by far the year where I have learned the most about myself, about what I want from life and where I want it to be headed. I feel that I now have a crystal clear vision of the things I want to achieve, and how I wish to be living my life from now on. As cheesy as it sounds, I feel proud and eager about actually working on achieving my "bucket list" of sorts.

I learned, for instance, that I actually don't want a 9-to-5 job and get sucked into the rat race, which was surprising, because I always thought I did.

I learned that I don't want my son to be raised by anyone other than me and my husband (at the moment, he spends about 3 hours a day with a nanny while we both work, as 90% of children in Colombia do). That for me was completely normal, as that is too how I was raised. I now know with full certainty that I don't wish that for my kid.

I learned that I actually can do something to be able to work for myself in the near future. This is something that up until last year I always saw very distant and difficult and unrealistic. In 2013 I realized that all it takes is to leave your comfort zone (easier said than done, but I took the plunge and feel prouder than ever!).

I learned that happiness does not depend on where you are. I always thought I would be completely miserable in New Zealand, and as it turns out, I absolutely loved it. But life had other plans and I ended up having to come back to Colombia, and I really struggled (and still do) with living here. So I had to learn to find the little things in my everyday life that made me happy, instead of focusing on how different this is to what I got used to in New Zealand. Otherwise I would have been terribly miserable all day, and that is certainly not something I want. It is not an easy job at all, and of course I don't succeed every day, but I do my best and have managed to actually be happy most of the time while being here.

I think the most important lesson of all in 2013, however, was precisely that contrast between New Zealand and Colombia. I think if I hadn't come back, I wouldn't have appreciated New Zealand as much as I do now. After living here for the past eight months, I know with 100% certainty that NZ is where I want to be, and settle down (and yes, I know I have mentioned this on here a thousand times), but I am saying it again because with the beginning of the new year, Sean and I finally decided that 2014 is the year when we go back!!! And I am absolutely thrilled and happy and excited, and a little nervous, as opposed to 2012 when I left Colombia completely devastated.

Thanks to all of these discoveries, I feel that 2014 is going to be the year of big life changes. Good life changes. Changes that are bringing me (and my husband and child) closer to what we envision. 2013 was such an important year for me, and it ended just as importantly with that little thing called my wedding, almost in a premonitory way of the awesome changes coming to my life this year.

Today, after one full week of 2014, I say "Bring it on!" and yes, it might be extremely cliché and ridiculous and all (I am rolling my eyes at myself writing this) but I think 2014 will be another YOLO year: "You Only Live Once so you better freaking start living the life you love now!"