Looking back at 2025, the highlight for me has been Scandinavia. It’s been 6 months since I was there but I still think about it all the time and how I really felt like myself when I was there. I think I was really my best self, my most radiant self and I felt truly beautiful in my own skin. There’s something about solo travel that opens up your soul and it made me feel so much more confident in myself. I enjoyed my own company, I had myself to rely on and I could see my strength. I also allowed myself to do things I never felt I could do, like just decide to go on a whim and spend money on things that I liked. For a long time in my life, I always felt like I had to justify why I wanted to buy something, but this year was a lot of just following my joy and allowing myself to have my desires. I didn’t become a shopaholic, far from that, but I just allowed myself to buy things that I wanted… Like, give myself the experience of having a stupidly expensive meal in a Michelin guide restaurant in Denmark… staying at hotels that I liked, and buying myself the APC bag cause I liked it and also getting myself a new Mac… Felt like I had real agency over myself.

I will never forget the feeling of that day when I travelled from my hotel to the airport via the metro. I really felt like I had my shit together. Ya know, just casually navigating a foreign country and not needing to ask anyone how to get to the airport lol. I will also never forget that moment when I was on the Fjord cruise in Norway and I was listening to Louder by Kygo via my airpods and the crescendo of the music matched the dramatic natural scenes I was seeing. It felt like I was so connected to nature. I was truly in my element there.

Another moment I’ll never forget, was when I was sleeping in my hotel room in Fukuoka. It was around 6am/7am, but the sun was just streaming into my room. It wasn’t a fancy hotel, but it was perfect in its utility.

It’s always the small things, the daily happenings.