2023 Recap - Strange New Worlds

I’m trying to put a finger on my thoughts for 2023. It’s been everything.

This year I travelled to 3 new countries. Morocco in a van with 5 unknown people; being a "pucca" tourist; touching Africa for the first time; and feeling like I was on the sets of a Hollywood-brushed movie. Denmark was joyful; cycling Copenhagen and the countryside; partaking in castles and parades, crystal clear cocktails and conversations with strangers.

Portugal was my first sibling holiday; being amazed by Madonna at 65; running into friends; and just taking in the surface of things.

Surfaces are a relief when you’ve been going too deep. Throughout the year, I remained entrenched in battles but learned to breathe through the struggle. I'm still learning. Aren't we all?! Deep diving is better with someone who's done it before. My vision for the future is getting clearer and i'm charting out a map for the way ahead.

Terroir and the way the wind blows will shape things. I just have to have to stick to the vision and keep plans fluid.

I'm happy to report I've turned manic organizational compulsions into a useful hobby!

Practicality with artistry is something I discovered I’m good at.

The restaurant is now a world on it’s own with different developing zones. The parts of the year where I got to focus on it, I managed to create quite the storm(s) – a midnight party with the shutters down, LGBTQ flavoured Karaoke nights, campaigns involving sarees, breakfast and celebrities.

My work is developing more character, attracting a whole different energy - first timers and old timers, personalities and the masses; it’s been all kinds of full – beautiful and stressful amongst them. Without fully realising it, I seem to have already had a vision in place and it’s worked! Phase 1 is done. This is phase 2. There’s still so much more invisible work to do.

2023 also let me to discover words for what I like doing "world building" – in fishtanks; in words; in spaces that need character; anywhere really. So much is in the head of the holder and the beholder!

I reckon this trait will morph AI-like into my future and encompass everything I do. It’s fiction and beauty and positivity all rolled into creation, and what indeed would life be without a little of all the above.

I can't say i'm happy or sad to see 2023 go. I use labels cautiously.

2024 from this viewpoint seems to be adjectivising into "exciting" "daunting" and very "on the edge".