What a year, eh? Holy cannoli, I don’t want to do that again.
I’m recapping the 2019 year of blog posts, and looking back through photos from a decade of living abroad. Whoa.
January 2019 started off with taking a look at my relationship with money. I’m proud that I posted it, cause, you know, vulnerability.
Then I continued the party with Looking back to move forward: What changes will you make this year? because we had just moved. Rereading it, I can now say that work was a mixed bag, but an overall improvement. Our home situation skyrocketed, thank goodness, and my writing focus changed throughout the year. I’m hoping in 2020, I’ll be able to take all that I learned and put it to good use.
In February, I wrote a funny bit about bad dates, as well as a positive (because I felt like that’s where I needed to go) reflection on living a nomadic life in What is home?
For March, I took a look at morning versus night personality types. I’ve been fascinated with habits and productivity for some time now.
The month ended with a recap of my travels with our American scholarship kids to Khao Yai National Park which was a lot of fun.
Next, I defended my right to be domestic with funny YouTube clips tossed in for good measure. Then I wrote about my relationship to poetry with samples of some of my favorites.
I know I’m ‘all over the place’ and that’s why I don’t have a large readership, but I can’t simply stick to one thing, or two, or three. Hopefully, one day the rest of the world will catch up. 😛
For my birthday month, May, I was audacious, How do you relate to people different than you? I know, right? Someone was on her high horse, wasn’t she?
And then in typical style, a melancholic post, which was oddly popular, my long essay on walking.
I ended the month with starting a newsletter! This was probably one of the best things I did this year, so much better than social media.
In June, I took at our first six months in a non-tourist town, and in July, the ugly side of traveling.
Spontaneously, I joined Sarah’s music challenge which I discovered from Darren. And against my better judgment I wrote a reaction piece to NYT’s “Want to be Less Racist, Move to Hawaii”. I mean, it’s a good post to a click-baity article, but I think everyone is overtired of this race topic. I know I am.
July was my first month I started Su’s The Changing Seasons challenges.
In August, I uploaded a silly list of the ways classrooms are the same here and back home.
I continued with the funny bits the following month with How to Be an Edgy and Thought-Provoking Asian American which I feared scared people away because in this current climate folks are afraid to laugh over the “wrong things”. (So over it, and will be the first to laugh over inappropriate and irreverent because that’s just the kind of delightful person I am. Damn it.)
For October, I wrote a post based on someone’s search term on my blog. I want to try to do this at least once a year because it’s fascinating. And because it had to do with being Asian, and I’m too weird about self-promo (like none this year), my opinion gets easily lost. But that’s okay, it made me think about something that I haven’t thought of in a while, and this year I want to be braver about sharing my work.
Ended the month on What no one tells you about eating out in Thailand, a reaction to another amusing post.
November was interesting because of the direction left-handedness: some stories and science went. I liked getting into the research of the topic.
And finally, in December, I wrote about Thailand’s changing diet, and a humorous piece on an imaginary introvert avoiding holiday parties.
Whew.
I wonder what I’ll write about in 2020?
Happy New Year, everybody! I hope 2020 is epic!
Life, the Universe, and Lani 
Comments create conversations. Let’s talk.