2015 Review: Year One of Unsettling

It's 18 days into 2016 and the world seems to have already forgotten it's the new year. It happens like this every year, too. We have the attention span of gnats. We get excited that it's the new year, make big plans, and then a few weeks in we completely forget what we wanted to achieve. But as of two weeks ago, Unsettle is a year old, and since I'm feeling a bit nostalgic at this time of year considering everything that happened this time last year, I wanted to do my review a bit later than most people do. This is a completely self-indulgent recount of 2015. It likely won't help you build your blog, your business, or get more clients, but it might be mildly entertaining if not show you what you can accomplish in a year. 2015 was an amazing year for me – one of my best yet. But despite the any amazing things that happened over the course of the year, some things didn't go so well.

January

5th: When I woke up at 4:00 AM for launch day. Sat at my desk alternating between refreshing Aweber account and Google Analytics. My heart leapt at the end of the day when I closed out at 3,267 views. 17th:  The Saturday morning during which I woke up early to get ready to go snowshoeing to see that 12 days after Unsettle launched, Chris Guillebeau picked up my launch post. Much screaming ensued. 28th: When my first guest went live on Fast Company.  Refreshing my Aweber account all day, watching as I passed 100, 200, 300 new subscribers. This article would hold one of the top 50 most popular posts on Fast Company over the past year.

February

4th: When I would celebrate my 26th birthday and my last day at my contract with a team I loved. 5th: When I left with a one-way ticket to Europe and a recently launched blog. 18th: When I sat in a milk cafe in my favourite city in the world, watching my inbox fill up with notification after notification of people signing up for my email list after one of my interviews was published.

March

1st: When Marissa and I arrived in Nice, France with press passes to Carnavale de Rio de la Musique. One word: confetti.

4th: When I sat in my beautiful room at the Hotel Torre di Bellosguardo, Florence, writing my first post for Boost Blog Traffic late into the night, and thought the 4.0 magnitude earthquake was Marissa moving furniture. 12th: When, after an anticipation-filled train ride as my first Boost Blog Traffic article was published, we arrived in Venice to one of my most exciting emails of the entire year… 13th: When I received a horrible message from Jason letting me know that my mother in law was on life support. 14th: When I finally got ahold of my husband after booking a flight back home only to find out the devastating news that my mother in law had passed away. 17th: When I finally arrived in London to take a flight back to Vancouver only to be denied check-in by Air Transat over an hour before boarding. When I, incredibly distraught, emotionally raw and horrified that I couldn't be with Jason during this horrible time, checked into a hotel for the night in London and spent another $1,000 on another flight back home for the following day. 18th: When I finally made it home. 20th: My mother in law's funeral.

April

22nd: When my guest post on Buffer was published (and is now the third most popular article on the Buffer blog over the past year). 29th: When I launched the Unsettle podcast with my first (and awesome) episode.

May

18th: When Cait and I left for our much-needed, well-deserved road trip. We visited Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, and Washington DC for a lot of fun, relaxation and connecting with other bloggers. 29th: When I interviewed my first major “influencer”, Jeff Goins, for an  inspiring interview.

June

2nd: When I got sick of playing it safe and letting my ego prevent me from taking massive, bold action. I declared June the “get uncomfortable” month and reached out to and connected with people I admired and actually asked for what I wanted. 8th: When I picked up a large contract in my previous field that proved that was not what I wanted to do with my time.

July

10th: When Cait and I (once again) packed up the car and set out to Portland for the World Domination Summit. 14th: When my first ever article went live on the Huffington Post. 19th: When I celebrated my first year of marriage. 29th: When I, in preparation for an interview with John Lee Dumas, reviewed my goals that I set back while sitting in a cafe in Madrid, and realized I had hit most of them.

August

6th: When I became convinced that I had some sort of attention problem and explored all the options I had to help me focus. 10th: When I stumbled across the perfect remedy for my self-prescribed ADHD: working out first thing. 21st: When I took the first break from everything to spend some wonderful quality time with my husband, aunt and cousins on a cruise.

September

10th: When my best friend and I pulled the trigger and booked a one-way flight to Bogota, Colombia in May 2016. 26th: When I started working with Nathan from Foundr and realized how much I love writing about entrepreneurship, business and marketing.

October

1st: When I started working with my coach, Jaime. 8th: When I went to Pioneer Nation in Mount Hood, Oregon and came back feeling both excited and confused about the direction of my business.

15th: When I began recruiting the first, beta testing members of my program and was blown away by the amazing people in this community. 26th: When I started the Slow Carb diet to deal with my emotional instability (that shit is real) and quickly realized it was the solution to everything.

November

7th: When the Etsy Success course launched, teaching me a lot of lessons about time management and taking on too much. 13th: When we officially started round one of the program and feelings of self-doubt began to trickle in (that I mostly squashed). 18th: When I finally lost that 15 pounds I gained over the course of far too many margerita pizzas and gelato treats in Europe. 30th: When I calculated my income for the month and realized it would be my first ever five-figure month.

December

3rd: When I published my favourite episode of the podcast yet – an interview with the ever-inspiring Chris Guillebeau. 15th: When I started working with SumoMe (a company I'd been obsessed with for the entire year).

    You know that saying that we overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, but underestimate what we can accomplish in a year? That was absolutely true for me over 2015. My word for the year was “growth”, and the year absolutely delivered. I grew more personally, professionally and within my relationships than I have in my entire life and while I experienced some serious lows in 2015, both from tragedy and emotionally, I learned a lot about myself in the process. My word for 2016 is “adventure”. We're only 18 days in and it's already delivered. I can't wait to see how it unfolds.