Hello hello hello, I hope you’re all doing well.

See I don’t heavily advertise this email list, unlike the other one, so if you’re receiving this email, hello friend – don’t mind me if I get a little personal. 

I said this on my Christmas video but I’ll say it again – 2020 went by so quick, but in many ways, it also was really slow. It didn’t seem that long ago when we had the devasting bushfires in January and temperatures of 47 degrees. Walking outside was like having a hair dryer on high heat constantly blowing onto your skin. It’s raining as I type this right now… hopefully we don’t get this extreme heat come January & February. 

I want to start off this recap by saying a massive thank you. Thank you so much for the support; whether you’ve watched the videos just once or you watch it every week. It’s crazy to think that the channel is about to hit 40,000 subscribers! 40,000 might not seem a lot but I think back to when it first hit 100 on the channel and in that respect, this number is pretty crazy to me. actually really crazy.

Thank you so much for being a part of the journey!

We actually had a lot of travel planned for this year; I ended up cancelling 5 international trips and two domestic ones. (I am still waiting on some refunds lol… I’ll let you know when I finally get everything back.) We were going to go to Bali, the Philippines, the US, Canada and the UK – though we couldn’t do it this year I promise it’ll happen when we can travel again. 

In spite of this, I do want to share some things I am really stoked to have done this year: 

• Uploaded at least one video every week for the entire year :D 

• Like I mentioned earlier, we are nearly at 40,000 subscribers on YouTube! 

• I started posting on Tik Tok this year and believe it or not, Oporto got in touch and asked to sponsor a couple of my Tik Tok videos!

• I created an email list called Sydney Insiders to partner with some of my favourite restaurants to give exclusive discounts to my subscribers (hope you had a chance to visit some of them!) 

• Completely revamped my website; something that’s going to be a focus of mine this year. 

One of the most important things I have learnt during my near 2 years on social media is how important it is to stay in my own lane. It is so tempting (and easy) to compare myself with other people who would make my achievements completely pale in comparison to theirs.

Time spent looking at what other people are doing is time taken away from me focusing on my goals; I mean, these can still be in my peripheral vision, but I’ve learned to use myself as my own benchmark: if I am improving, even if it’s only an incremental improvement, it’s still step in the right direction. 

Thank you so much for giving me a platform to create videos that I really enjoy making. If you have any video suggestions, do let me know! As much as I want to create videos I enjoy, I also want to make sure I’m creating stuff you’d want to watch too 😊 

Ok and that pretty much rounds out my first newsletter to you. (thought a nice year end blurb would be good to start this off)

As usual, thanks for sticking til the end and as always, stay safe and take care.

Janice