The Year 2019: The Leap of Faith Continues.

The Year 2019: The Leap of Faith Continues:

We are once more at the threshold of completing another year and embarking onto another New Year!

The year 2019 has been for me a continuation of The Year 2018: A Leap of Faith. 

I am aware that this year 2019 has brought a lot of sorrow, happiness, success and joy to many people.  However, whatever be our circumstances, there is always scope for gratitude for whatever it may have brought us.

2019 was a very memorable year for me in several aspects of my life and here is what I am eternally grateful for:

1. Discovery of a new skill/talent:

In the beginning of this year (2019), I took two friends with me on a tour to UK for 15 days trip.  We had a marvellous time and it made me realize and discover that I have it in me,  to organize  and take out small group tours. It was an amazing feeling at the end of the tour. Of course, there is a lot of responsibility attached to it, but I found it extremely fulfilling in doing the same. So yes, I am very grateful and thankful to my two friends for giving me this opportunity to explore my potential.

2. Interaction with Inspiring people from around the world and sharing their stories of Inspiration:

This year since the month of April 2019, I started my new Travel Bliss Interview Series, wherein each month I featured  interviews with two people from around the world – who may be a home-maker, a traveler, a blogger, or a biker or a painter or a baker, or a potter or an entrepreneur or a writer or just about anyone who have chosen to follow their bliss against all odds.

It has been truly very enriching doing their interviews. Their interviews have been such an inspiration to me and I am sure to all those who have read them and a motivating factor, to continue to strive and explore and try out new things or just excel in whatever we put our minds to do. It is trying to find out the other side of the success story of people. So I am truly grateful and thankful to all those who agreed to be interviewed on my website with their stories of inspiration.

At this point, I would like to sincerely apologize to my travel blogger friends and all others whom I had committed to interview and post their interviews on my website, but couldn’t in the months of November 2019 and December 2019, as I had been traveling in November and dealing with some health issues in the month of December 2019. There has been a backlog of interviews, but I assure you that I will make it up to you and will definitely complete all the interviews that I had committed to do and post it on my website, so that all others too will be inspired by your success stories. I will be posting your interviews from February 2020 onwards and would only request you to bear with me until then.

In the meanwhile, if anyone has missed on any of the awesome interviews that was done, please do checkout the following posts:

1^st April 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part I – Jyoti Nayak

14^th April 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part II – Nate Hake – Travel Lemming

30^th April 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part III – Izzy and Phil – The Gap Decaders

31^st May 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part IV – Pamela D’Silva – Cake Walk

1^st July 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part VI – Adam Cheshier – Wanderway

1st August 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part VIII –  Iris Joschko – Earth the Beauty

16^th August 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series:  Part IX – Jessica Zappelli – Papillon Traveller

1^st September 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part X – John Paul – The Hangry Backpacker

16^th September 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part XI – Felicity Frankish – The Baby Vine

17^th October 2019 – Travel Bliss Interview Series: Part XII – Charlotte Tweed – A Wandering Web

3.  An opportunity to grow spiritually:

Since I took this Leap of Faith in the year 2018 and quit my job in June 2018, since then, it has been a year of spending quiet time at home with family, blogging and planning International Travel Holiday Itineraries. Most importantly, my time at home, gave me an opportunity to dwell more on the Word of God and in prayer and thus kind of grow spiritually. This year has definitely been a year of great revelation for me in ways more than I could ever imagine and has brought me closer to God. So for this, I am very grateful and thankful to God.

4. Cultivation and honing of domestic skills:

My quiet time at home also gave me a chance to cultivate and hone further my domestic skills like cooking, keeping house, budgeting, managing my expenses within my limited finances and of course time management! Being at home can tend to make you indisciplined. But, I maintained a time-table and began my day as I would have begun my normal office working day and kept track of my productivity / lack of productivity of my work. So I am grateful and thankful for this opportunity of reinventing myself at home 🙂 There never was a dull moment, believe me 🙂

5. New Friendships and Relationships:

This year has also been great with regards to developing new friendships and relationships. I am really very grateful and thankful for the new friends that I made this year and hope it will be a beginning to a beautiful, lasting friendship.

6. Cousins’ Reunion:

The best part of the entire year was attending my Cousins’ Reunion at my hometown in Mangalore, in India. The reunion was a dream come true. I am going to do a dedicated post on the exotic place that we stayed at and the lovely food that we gorged on. I am really very thankful and grateful to all my Cousins for making it to the Reunion. We had the most amazing time of our lives and it will be a memory that I will cherish for a long time to come.

7. My sickness:

There has also been a downside to this year and the year ended with a bang for me, with me falling sick in this last month of December 2019, which has kind of being a huge dampener for me. Still, I am thankful and very grateful, that I am alive 🙂 It has made me realize the gift of life and of course how sometimes, we take our great health for granted. So it has been an eye-opener for me and I guess the New Year will be spent in restoring my health.

All in all, it has been a very enriching and fulfilling year (as you can see from the above) and I look forward to what the New Year 2020 has in store for me!

I wish each and everyone of you a very Happy New Year 2020. May it be a year of all that you desire for and all that you hoped for.

Till then, keep travelling and keep sharing your stories of triumph and inspiration here.

Your TravelMate