2016: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Hello, first post of 2017! I realise this post is probably a few days late, but it's been cooking in my mind for quite some time now. I feel like it's practically impossible to accurately remember everything that happened in between the great and awful aspects that comprised 2016, a year I will certainly never forget. So here goes, my audience of probably three people and my mum!

THE GOOD 

I read all over social media that 2016 was a horrible year that needs to be erased off the books. Yeah I know, deaths everywhere, Brexit (ugh), Trump (ew) but, even though we're all so quick to jump on the negativity bandwagon, I actually can't say 2016 was a bad year! Some pretty amazing things happened, like starting the year with my first job (literally, I started on the 2nd of January, exactly one year ago today!) and being fortunate enough to work in my area and love it, too. 

Now, something football related (it might seem silly to all of you, but it's my field of work, after all): Portugal won Euro'2016! I can't tell you how long I'd been waiting for that moment, to celebrate so effusively with everyone and feel this country so happy and united. Every so often I rewatch the game and it's like I'm all the way back in July celebrating with everyone! It was a summer I'll never forget, that's for sure, especially being fortunate enough to work in sports and be so close to everything.

2016 was also the year this blog grew in ways I never thought possible a few years ago! I'm now super close to 100,000 unique views, I created my own little Instagram which is my pride and joy and my creative outlet (follow along if you'd like, @franciscamayyy). I'm so happy I stuck with this blog, it's definitely my creative release after a long day at work! I hope 2017 brings a lot more success and improvement to my little corner on the web here.

This year I met amazing new people and coworkers, but what truly made me happy was realising how strong my relationship with a few people is. I'm not someone who keeps a lot of friends, I just don't have the time nor patience to feed innocuous friendships, but the ones I do keep make me so happy, proud and comforted! It's the best feeling.

THE BAD

I have Crohn's, an autoimmune disease that affects my bowels and stomach (if you fancy reading some of my posts on it, click here). In a way I can only be grateful, seeing as I felt relatively good all year and didn't have a particular flare up to deal with, but since I've started working I've been experiencing a lot more fatigue than usual, as well as a pretty significant weight loss. As a result of that, I feel weaker and a lot less confident in my body, so that was a big struggle of mine in 2016. I wrote an honest post all about my self esteem issues here, if you'd like to have a little read!

Speaking of work, not everything was rainbows and butterflies. Working in a field dominated by men was a pretty hard thing to adjust to, some days I felt like I was in over my head and literally suffered pretty bad anxiety attacks at night re: comments at work and certain behaviours, as well as feeling a bit unappreciated and unmotivated. I'm nothing if not strong and resilient (as well as refusing to show weakness), so I've somewhat learned to cancel out that noise, but it's still a pretty hard thing to cope with – I'm only 22, after all. I'll probably do a full brutally honest post about this, but we'll see.