My word to describe 2023 is “chaos”. I felt like I had no stability, balance, or control the whole year and so here are the steps I am taking to find stability, balance, and control in the new year!
Digital Planner: https://www.etsy.com/de-en/listing/1516219209/that-girl-planner-undated-digital?ref=yr_purchases
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Hi! My name is Michaela! I am a kiwi who moved to Germany to do my PhD at the University of Tübingen! Welcome to my little space on the internet 😊
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🔸 I am 27 years old and come from Auckland, New Zealand
🔸 I am married to the LOVE of my life, Luke 🙂
🔸 I moved to Germany in Dec 2021 for my PhD. I study Medieval History at the University of Tübingen
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I’m going to let the sunshine in the day I’m trying to make this Darkness go away I’ll paint with colors and I’ll sing until my lungs give out I’m going to let the sunshine in day and I will leave my windows open so that I can hear the sound of people talking
The wind blowing in the trees oh I will open up my eyes so I can see the light oh and I’ll try to spread my wings so I can fly oh the starts to fade like so if there’s one word that I could use to I guess encapsulate 2023 it would be
Chaos and I don’t know I’ve been going over a whole bunch of videos that I’ve made over the last year and I I honestly don’t even remember what I was trying to do with the year I think like I don’t know I remember creating a whole bunch of goals
And everything and I remember filming a video with Luke in New Zealand about 2023 but none of it happened I I mean I don’t think any of it happened like I I think I just ended up trying to survive and that’s okay I think I’ve come to terms
With it and that that is what was needed and that was what I yeah I I think it was just what I needed for the year I think the year threw a lot of me me that I wasn’t expecting and I was so busy with travel
And like we traveled so much this year I think we calculated that we were gone for a week of most months traveling which is so cool and me we got to see so much of the world and I’ve been able to achieve so much this year that I hadn’t
Otherwise been able to achieve and I’ve met so many cool people and like I was actually just clearing out my phone in like preparation for next year and going through and clearing out all the photos and the videos and it was just blowing my mind the stuff that we got to do like
We went to Princeton I presented at Princeton this year and we traveled around the US and went to Jerusalem and we went to Hy on Y and went to a Book Festival went to the UK twice we’ve met so many cool people this year and we’ve traveled
To so many countries and I don’t know I guess I’m just I’m I’m shocked going through those photos and seeing like wow this is one of the most exciting years that I’ve ever had and I know that when I was dying to leave New Zealand and we were planning
This trip to move to Germany one of the things that I was looking for was excitement because I felt like my life in New Zealand was so Bland or like Restless I think Restless is probably a better word Bland isn’t right we we had like a dog and
Guinea pigs and we tried to do as much as we could but I just felt so restless and I think it was so cool going through this year and traveling so much when we started the year in New Zealand I keep forgetting that we were in New Zealand this year and to thank
How far we’ve come and how much we’ve traveled and how much we’ve seen is so cool but at the same time this is one of the worst years that I’ve had in a really long time and my mental health was really terrible this year I was all
Over the place a lot of the time which I know wasn’t helped by the fact that we were so unsettled like we didn’t get into the whole year we never got into a good working routine and we never got into like a good momentum for anything
Because we were always here for 2 weeks or there for 2 weeks or working from home or working in the office or working on holiday and I think Luke was saying the other day that he’s felt like for most of this year he’s either been working
Hard because he knows he’s got a week off coming up soon or catching up from work that he’s missed because he took a week off and I think that really characterized how I was feeling this year that I honestly just felt like the whole time I was playing catchup or
Trying to get on top of things in order to take time off and that’s definitely played into the feeling of chaos a lot and feeling like I was getting I don’t want to say burnt out because I didn’t feel burnt out I just felt tired and I
Felt like like I kept trying to find new routines that would work for me because we’d be I don’t know so many times we’d be up till like midnight or 1:00 and then waking up at 9:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. which for me Isn’t good because I want
To wake up at like ideally I want to wake up at 7:00 a.m. and have a good morning and then go to work and start my work day we finished at like 5 or 6 and half the afternoon and I don’t think I don’t think that happened for a consecutive week this whole
Year I was definitely able to do it in like bits and places but it just yeah it was a really exciting year but it was just compl complete and utter chaos and so I think that’s kind of reflected into what I want for this next year
And one of the things that I I I’ve kind of I don’t know come up with words that I want to characterize this next year one of them not being chaos um actually let’s let’s turn on this screen [Laughter] recording and we can go through this together so basically what I’ve done
This year is I I’m going for a digital planner and I’m hoping that this will I don’t know keep me more on track this year i’ I’ve kind of planned out roughly how I want this year to look rather than just taking it month by month and I’m hoping that having a digital
Planner which is on my tablet which I can take with me any here is going to be a bit more versatile than having it on a written planner I was trying so hard to stick with the written planner thing and I might go back to it I don’t know but
I’m going to try this digital planner thing and see how it works for me because I take it with me anyway when we’re traveling so I can do readings on it and I take it with me to the office when I’m doing readings and so rather than taking this and a digital Journal
Hopefully I can stay on track with stuff and so I bought this on Etsy I can put the link in the description box if you’re interested I actually colored out the front page it I mean I’ve left the that girl planner thing there but I had a whole bunch of
Images and it just it wasn’t bringing me joy so I crossed out the images deleted them and yeah I don’t know uh the thing with this planner that I really liked is that it’s kind of like a bullet Journal which is what I was wanting because I find with the chaos of
This year I wasn’t spending time reflecting and I wasn’t spending time planning for the coming month or I don’t know I I realized I’m somebody who does really well with a plan and with control and so one of the things that I wanted to bring into this next year was control
And one of the ways that I found out doing that is with a bullet Jour like this which comes with places where you can reflect and make plans see over overviews of things flick through things and then the second thing that I’ll show you which is budgeting which is a new
Thing I’m bringing in this year to hopefully try and bring some control back to and balance not just control cuz I know that control can have some bad connotations but balance as well so yeah this is an overview of what you can get in this journal and this is one of the
Things that I was really looking for is that it’s not just got like your day-to-day planner but it’s got like a month L planner a yearly overview a goal section monthly reflection it does have a monthly budget in here but I’m using an Excel sheet which I’ll show you but
It does have a budget in here if this is what you’re wanting to do but then it’s also got a whole bunch of different stuff like meal planners and cleaning checklist grocery list contact list goals brain dump which I think will be really helpful it’s got a whole bunch of
Different note Pages for lined grid dotted and blank and it’s got like a routine planner which I’m definitely going to be using and of course the whole Finance section which I’m not going to be using but it’s also got like all of these things on the side um so you can switch
Easily between lifestyle productivity wellness and finance and then very easily between the months Oops There You Go went to the different thing um and then up here which I just clicked on it’s got the homepage which brings you back to this which is just brilliant
So what I have done is I’ve gone through and I’m using the year at a glance for big things so like I’ve put in birthdays with a cake I don’t know why I made the cake green I’m going to be honest I picked a color that I liked and then I
Did it and then I realized it was really stupid I should have made it like brown or I don’t know white or something anyway we’ve gone with it now and we have green cake for birthdays I’ve also put in like wedding anniversaries like ow down here Christmas and any other big
Things I’m going to put in there this is just like a basic start for what I’ve done so far and then in the yearly overview down here which is more of like Aid section this is year at of glance this is yearly overview I’ve put travel
Stuff cuz I know that travel’s coming up and one of the things that I’m doing with my budget this year is I’m actually making a travel budget so that I’m not just I don’t know I was finding one of the chaos this year was feeling like
We’re running out of money all the time because we kind of just had one big savings account and every time we traveled or each time we needed groceries or anything like everything came out of the savings account and it felt really stressful and so I’m actually setting aside a savings account
For travel so that I can know what’s happening and save for it and so I’ve started putting in stuff that’s stuff that’s confirmed like we’re going to Olivia rodrigue concert in Frankfurt in June and like I know that I’ve got a conference in July
On the 1st to the 5th and I’ve got a friend coming over in August and Luke’s dad is coming over in September and then it’s stuff like we want to travel to Boston in October hopefully and so I put that in there so I can know what we’re planning towards
And Luke’s sister and brother-in-law might be coming over in April or May so I’ve put that in there so it’s something that I’m aware of I haven’t filled it out completely but this like in January I really should put that in a few days I’m going to Brussels so I should have
Put that in there but I haven’t but this is kind of going to be the travel overview obviously it’s not from planning each trip but just so that I can see what’s happening and not feel like I’m in the Lurch with anything and then the next thing that I have is my
Yearly goals which is kind of the main thing for this year I kind of have two main words for that I want to characterize this next year besides control cuz I really don’t want control to be the name of my year the balance I found I feel like balance is a
Nicer way to characterize things and obviously there’s Acra steps but it was more me just trying to figure out what balance meant for me and one of the things that I want for next year is like a good solid morning routine and work routine and whether that
Means going to the office 5 days a week so that I can have a work life balance because that’s one thing I felt like I didn’t have in 2023 then maybe that’s what I need to do but I need to decide what that looks like and having a maintainable morning
Routine so that I don’t feel like I’m just like getting up and rushing out the door or getting up and going straight to my computer because I just felt like I didn’t have time to get into the day and I know that if there’s something that’s really important to me
Like one of the things I want to do this year is read more non-fiction books that’s something that I need brain space for and so I want to do that first thing in the morning cuz if I try to do it in the evening after a full work day
It’s not it’s not going to happen and so if I want to do that I want to do that in the morning and like language learning I want to spend more time actually dedicating it to language learning and I was looking at doing a course in the first half of the year
Because we’re not traveling for the first like until June I think we don’t we’re not going anywhere and I was planning on doing an inperson or online language course but Luke is doing a course for work and we’re kind of putting our money into that and so there’s so many free resources online
Like Jingo for example and so many different things available that I want to make use of that and see if I can actually put in like 15 20 30 minutes a day if that can help improve cuz I’m fighting with my German for example the main thing is
Having the words I feel like my grammar is not terrible and I feel like I’m operating day-to-day in German now but my vocabulary is quite limited and so rather than sitting a course which I can do maybe later but for right now I can’t then maybe I spend that
Time I don’t know like going on Quizlet and learning words that I can then use in the dayto day and so stuff like that that I need to figure out what do I want in my morning routine that I can stick to so that I can then go to work fully concentrate on
Work come home and have the evening and whether that’s going to the gym or whatever like I I don’t know what that looks like yet but if I can have balance through a controlled week then I think I will get to the weekend and not feel like I’m constantly behind or that
I haven’t completed my hours for work that week and so I have to work in the weekend and and stuff like that so balance is a really big thing that I want to focus on this year and then the other big thing which is kind of strange is silence
Um and I haven’t written down what this means for me yet because it was kind of it’s something that I’ve been trying to M over but I think one of the reasons this year felt so chaotic was because I was just go go go go go and I felt like
I had to be go go go because we had such limited time between trips and I was either writing a conference paper or writing the next chapter or complete some work hours before a meeting and this whole whole year has just felt very pressured and go that I had to amp
Myself up to maintain that level of work and so if I stopped I felt like I couldn’t do anything I was just stuck and so I had to continuously have this very amped up very productive mindset and what that meant was having no silence because I mean I don’t know I
Started therapy and I started taking medication and I was afraid of my thoughts as well and so if I did have quiet time I’d put on a movie or put on my audio book or if I was doing the dishes I put on my audio book so I
Wouldn’t have to be in my thoughts and when I was cycling I’d listen to music or an audio book or at the gym constantly listening to something between tasks at work I’ve put something on even if it was only for like 5 10 minutes if I was walking to the shops
Everything they did there was always sound and it maintained that level of ampt because it meant that my brain was constantly working but it also helped me push aside from some of the things that I was supposed to be working on in therapy and things that I don’t know just like
Getting used to sitting with yourself and being comfortable with yourself and it’s stuff like that that I’ve been very afraid of for a long time and it’s something that I feel like incorporates the whole or like works well with the idea of balance where I don’t just want to be
Go go go the whole time I want to have like I want to be productive and I want to work hard but I also want to rest and understand what rest means and so silence is something that I I want to learn to sit in the silence
And I want to learn to do things without constantly needing sound in my ears because I’m afraid of what my thoughts will be like if there isn’t something there dominating my thoughts and then budgeting I’m going to go talk through a little bit later but I do feel like it’s
Felt like such chaos for the last 2 years we haven’t really been budgeting we’re quite good people we don’t really spend that much money to be honest unless we’re traveling but we don’t buy a lot of stuff we don’t eat out a lot like obviously I eat out with
My department but aside from that we don’t we don’t eat out we we might eat out if it’s date night and stuff like that but we don’t spend a lot of money in the dayto day if that makes sense so we’re not bad at saving it’s
More just this year I want to save with the plan and so I’ve kind of divided up into expenses and how much of my paycheck is going to expenses and then how much can go towards saving for like I’ve I’ve set up a gifts bank account so that when we buy
Birthday gifts for people I know I always struggle with like oh my gosh I don’t have money to buy them a gift it’s in a bank account that I can draw from and I don’t have to feel guilty that it’s coming from potential groceries or potential rent if that makes sense like
I’ve I’ve set it aside and it’s there specifically for the purpose of birthday gifts and Christmas and then I’ve also set up a travel fund and that’s what I was talking about is having that yearly overview of what travel is coming up there’s a bank account specifically for
Travel and so I can start putting towards it knowing that like oh we need to be buy flights of this much we actually have money in the bank account for travel so that it’s not coming out of potential rent and potential groceries and I know for me that’s going
To make me feel a lot better and feel like I’m not constantly behind on stuff or that I’m constantly having to pay back into the savings account because it’s set aside and dedicated for travel and then my actually main thing for this year is investing we were a part of
Sheries in New Zealand ages ago and we stopped doing it when we moved to Germany so that we could move over here with as much money as we needed especially cuz I didn’t have a scholarship we had to show proof of money to get a Visa now that I’ve got a
Scholarship life is a lot easier and I want to get back into into investing and I know all the investing videos out there say the best time to start investing was yesterday and the second best time is today and so I’ve kind of tried to stop thinking about the fact
That I haven’t invested yet or we haven’t for the last 2 years and actually just set it up and do it this year and also set aside money for it so there’s two things that we’re doing one of it is investing in Li’s business and actually putting money into it and
That’s one of the reasons he’s able to do the course at the beginning of this year it’s a 3-month course and we’re almost turning it into like a I know like a business investment in the hopes that realistically doing this course should I think double his income the way
That it’s set up and so it’s an invest in the business but also investing in ETFs I think that’s what it’s called but we’re going through a a company that like like sh’s kind of investing in different funds and long-term plans and stuff I I’m going to be honest I don’t understand investing
That much and that’s why we’re going through a company um so that’s another thing that I’m planning for this year but also I’m aware that my student loan is interest free only while I’m working sorry only while I’m studying and so I also would like to decrease that as much
As possible so that it’s less interest by the time I finish my studies I’m not expecting to pay it off by the time I finish my studies my PhD at least but it would be nice to have it as low as possible so that when I come out of the
PHD and it suddenly becomes an interest alone with interest that it’s not too high and then another goal that I have for this year is worship and hope um and those are kind of linked to this year of feeling like it was very chaotic and like I wasn’t really
Coping I want to spend some more time just like sitting in worship music and dedicating to worship cuz I know that that really fills me up but I also felt really hopeless for most of this year and my mental health was really really bad at
Times and I think that led to me being quite cynical and very like I don’t want to say difficult to be around but I wasn’t the happiest person to be around and that’s fine like it was something that I was working through and I was going through it
But I kind of want to turn things around this year and have a bit more hope and joy and not be flick flacking between like extreme eyes and being really happy traveling like on top of the world to extremely extremely low and depressed and struggling to get out of bed and
Even though obviously I can’t prevent the low moments I still want to have this I want to try and aim towards having this underlying level of hope that this year is going to be a good year and that things will get better and that I can have a good week and that
It’s like a momentary law rather than I’m going to feel like this forever so yeah that’s kind of a main thing and then with this bullet Journal digital planner thing it gets you to write a letter to yourself so I did that I haven’t done the vision board yet um but
Then I’ve got into planning January and so I’ve kind of put in the main things that I want to do for the year sorry for the month so in green I’ve got my uni stuff red I’ve got stuff I want to do for YouTube cuz I definitely want to
Stick that up this year and blue is kind of everything else whether it be social stuff or church stuff or travel or whatever and then an overview so I’ve got like my priority this is the thing that I like most about these kind of planners is that it’s I’m just I’m not a
Very creative person and I tried bullet journaling but I’m really bad at like coming up with the sprits and stuff and so it’s really nice that this has the spreads themselves and so it’s got like I have a Tracker and so I the things that I’ve put in for this month are
Having like G workout um reading the Bible stretching reading a non-fiction book because I don’t have trouble reading fiction book it’s reading non-fiction books that I really want to do this year I want to load stuff this year and whether that be investing or whether it be about immigration or
Politics or whatever like I want to get better with that kind of stuff um and then my language is goal and then it’s got a section for like important dates and monthly to-do list priorities and then a goal for the month I haven’t filled in action steps yet but my goal
For this month is to set up a good weekly routine that I can maintain to and stick to yeah and then it’s got a reflection section at the end which is really cool uh budget I’m not going to do obviously and then it’s just got like a daily thing which I’m really excited
To fill out so so it’s got like a schedule intentions Focus for the day to-do list plans for tomorrow which I’m really thankful for because I often feel like oh I can’t do this today but I want to write it down and so the fact that
It’s there it’s got a habit tracker end of the day reflection what I want to achieve meals and hydration selfcare affirmations what I’m grateful for it’s quite a cool setup um so obviously it goes through that for the whole month see else I’m going to be honest I haven’t really looked through everything
Um after the daily thing it’s also got weekly planner if you prefer to do it that way so if you don’t want to have like a full spread for each day you can have it for the week it’s also got a weekly schedule if you’d prefer that um
But I’m definitely a daily thing I I I do a lot each day and I like to have things very detailed out so I’m definitely going to be using the daily schedule and yeah so so that’s most of it oh I guess I can click
The button to go back to the start um I haven’t filled in anything else yet but you can click stuff like dotted for example and it takes you to a whole note section grocery list here snack L meal planner it’s quite cool it’s very easy to just click between the
Stuff and so yeah that’s kind of it for my daily planner and then in terms of my budget I’m doing it on Google Sheets so that it’s sucessful on all of my devices and what I really want to do this year is actually log everything so I can see
How much I’m actually spending on groceries rather than just being like Oh I spent €100 on groceries this year or this week and actually be like okay I bought a few extra snacks this week what did that come to slash not feeling guilty about buying things like chocolate for dessert because it’s come
To a certain amount and I’m expecting it to come to that amount but also putting in stuff like if we get monetary gifts what they can go towards and my research costs that are included in my scholarship and yeah just like a whole bunch I just want to know exactly what’s
Coming in what’s going out so I can see what we’re actually dealing with and hopefully that can contribute towards removing any silly costs because I don’t know if I see something for like €3 I’m normally like oh it’s only €3 but I now know that I have to put that in
The spreadsheet which is fine it’s not like I can’t spend €3 on something but if I’m spending €3 on miscellaneous stuff every 2 days for example I’m writing it down until I’m noticing it more and so it’s mostly just to become more aware if that makes sense uh so I
Also got this Budget on Etsy so I can link it in the bottom if you’re interested in it but it’s got instructions on how to set everything up which is quite nice you set up for your thing so you can fill in customize your own categories um and I’ve put in like
My paychecks side hustle I’m hoping one day that I can monetize my YouTube and that that might be there but in the meantime I’m also doing some freelance proof reading and so that’s kind of going in there and then any monetary gifts and stuff but then we’ve also got
Expenses that I’ve laid out into like groceries social events transportation household clothing Etc bills the usual savings which you can see I’ve already talked about Investments Daval funds research costs and presents I expect to change it from gifts because I had gifts for income and then it was freaking out the program cuz
It does it by words and so if that was the same it couldn’t work so we got presents and then debt um the only didn’t I have as a student loan and so that’s what I want to be working on a bit more this month uh this year and
Then it’s got a Gold Tracker as well which I I haven’t spent as much time on but I put it in here anyway just because why not want to decrease my student loan write sections of my thesis investing going to the gym planning a teaching schedule for the following year date night languages
Read non-fiction books but it’s very cool because you can like say what you’re doing like find a topic I’m interested and then you can tick it and it will say now your progress is 50% and then it’s got all of these like calculation things up here for when you
Complete something and it’ll say how many of your goes are done for the year so that’s quite a cool addition I don’t know how much I’m going to use it because I’ve got my digital planner but it’ll be nice to I don’t know keep on track of it you got a transactions page
I’ve kind of just put it in to figure out what I’m predicting for January so obviously I’m going to update this as things happen but I’ve got like paychecks and subscriptions and all that stuff that needs to come out and then what that turns into is an annual dashboard where it puts together
Once you filled out obviously transactions for a whole year it will show you how much money you putting into groceries or how much money you’re putting into bills how many savings you’ve made this year which is quite cool and it’s got like segments where it comes out with different things but it’s
Also got the pie charts which I really like and where you’ve just been allocating stuff it’s got a whole section which I really like but then it’s also got like a January breakdown so obviously this is only partially done because I’ve only done a little bit but it shows through what’s expected what’s
Actual you can fill in different sections like how much you’re expecting to spend on groceries and then how much you actually spend and how much you’re expecting to spend on subscriptions how much you actually spend and then it comes here and tells you how much you’ve
Spent the most on so because I haven’t put in that much for the month yet my top thing that I’ve spent money on is my health insurance which is €220 and that will obviously change as we spend money on stuff and log it but yeah and then it just goes through that
For the rest of the year and I’m hoping that if this goes well that I can just continue to use it because it’s not set to a certain year you kind of set it up for what you’re using it for and so this is what I’ve set it up for 2024 but it
Does mean that I can hopefully reuse this I feel like what I want to do for this year is run off the Mantra I guess that knowledge is power and I think that’s how I’m going to be able to quote unquote maintain control in my life and
Not lead to such a chaotic flick Flack here is that if I can have the balance in my work week I can have a restful weekend and if I can track what I’m spending money on and put away savings I cannot feel like I’m out of control and constantly
Not having money to be able to do stuff and yeah I think it’s it’s more just the more I’m aware of stuff the less I should be panicking about stuff or maybe I’ll find that we’re just screwed and then I can panic but at least I’ll know it
But no I don’t think that will be the case we actually have more money than I thought we did which is really cool and that’s the whole thing is that like you don’t know unless you’re aware of it and you make yourself aware of it so yeah
That’s kind of my plan for this year my plan for at least January is to figure out a good routine that hopefully I can maintain for the rest of the year and actually spend some good work time so that I can spend some good resting time
And yeah so thank you so much for coming along on this really strange reflective first video of 2024 and if you’re new here hi I hope that you’ll join along with my random Journey throughout 2024 to try and find more balance and control and maybe that will
Inspire you to find more balance and control in your life if you’re feeling chaotic but if you’re not new here thanks for coming back and I hope that you enjoyed the slightly more reflective video it’s been a lot of traffic videos recently obviously because of December and blogmas and everything but I’m
Really excited to get more into like a a routine and not have such a I don’t know chaotic week every single week I really looking for stability I’m someone who thrives in stability So yeah thank you for watching I hope that you enjoyed this video and that you’ve had a nice
December and you’re looking forward to the new year and I will see you with another video very soon we got time on our we’re in a state of home I need you all my fire I want