Au Revoir, 2014

Well, 2014 is officially over (and I am finally getting back to blogging!). This time last year, I was saying good riddance to a pretty crummy 2013, but 2014 was one for the books, from my work life to friends, travel both near & far to time I spent getting to know my city (even) better. While I'm not wild about new years, the turn of the calendar (it's just the clock striking midnight for yet another day) or resolutions—more on that in another post to come—I do like that I have this little virtual diary to track what's happened so far, and I have another 73 days left until spring so I might as well reminisce about something.

I pulled a lot of the images for this post from my instagram feed in 2014, and looking over it reminded me of some of the amazing things that happened last year (gotta love virtual diaries, no?). Now, I know some of you are probably like, "I don't really care for yet another re-cap from another blogger about their year" (and I think Hitha wrote a great post on this here) but for me, this is more personal. It's a reminder of how far I've come and an inspiration to make the coming spring, summer & fall just as amazing! At the start of 2013, I was feeling unsatisfied in my job when my grandpa got very sick and passed later that spring. It was the first close family death I'd had to really deal with, and it hit me hard. I entered a pretty deep depression and my stressed, lowered immune system fell ill with a virus that wiped me out for months. Things finally started to turn around the last few months as I took on a new job and made an effort to get back out there, but it was really this past spring when I came back out of my shell and vowed to stop letting myself mope or make excuses and start living my life.

I tend to "hibernate" during January and most of February, fashion week and work obligations aside, taking the time to fully un-wind while the days are short (hence part of the reason I've been slow getting back to posting here) and spend as much time relaxing at home and biding my time til the temps warm up. Once they *finally* did this past year, I was on the go around NYC constantly, frequently packing two to three week stretches of time with plans every night and weekend. Picnics in the park, sprawling out with a book in the park, more brunch dates than I could possibly count, pool parties, colorful drinks in the sunshine, flea markets, farmer's markets, early weekend SoulCycle classes then wandering SoHo, happy hours and dinners and rooftops and museums and beaches and bright, warm Saturdays in Brooklyn—nothing was left off my agenda.

I crossed a lot of new things off my list, but also found myself back at my old favorites pretty often, too. Brunch at Joseph Leonard's is always a must, as is a day trip out to Jones Beach (SO much cleaner and nicer than Rockaways or Coney Island!). This summer was my first time on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum, and I can't wait to grab a drink up there next summer, too. I mixed some old favorites + new to-do's in this post, and am pretty proud that I managed to cross all of them off my list, the last one being a trip to the Glass House in Connecticut in early November.

For someone who'd been on a plane only once before college and about twice a year during college, this was definitely my most-traveled year yet. Most of my plane travel since moving to NYC has been to fly back home to see family and friends (a wedding in Mexico aside), but I've been making a conscious effort to see and do more while I'm young and unattached to much of anything. My first trip of the year was to Arizona to visit my very dearest friend, followed by a weekend in D.C. later that spring, a quick trip home (where I celebrated my 25th birthday and went to a wedding), several trips to various beaches and Long Island over the summer, a day trip upstate for horse races, finally capped off with another, longer trip home for my sister's wedding. September and October were a whirlwind at work, then I jumped on another plane for a last-minute trip to London.

So, needless to say, that skyline view was one I got used to this year (anyone else also try to spot their apartment/street from the plane every time they come in to land at home? That can't be just me. This picture is over Brooklyn, so my place is a bit further north!). I still love the feeling of flying in over the city, and will never forget the first time I looked out the window after my first trip back home in 2011  and thought, "This is home." That being said, after traveling so much this year—especially to Europe—I was reminded that New York City probably isn't my forever home. I'd love to live in Europe and was surprised by how much I enjoyed and appreciated London, even more so once I'd landed back on our soil. Now, before you get ahead of me, I have no idea when I will leave the city. It could be in a year, five years, a decade…it's not a plan, just an idea and a thought right now, and there's no reason to say I wouldn't come back after I lived in whatever my next city will be (because I do  really love this one, after all). 

There's a lot more I could say on 2014, but sometimes memories are best re-lived inside the head of the person they belong to because, truthfully, they're just not that interesting to someone who wasn't a part of them! I've got another post coming up (hopefully later this week) about what I'm now looking forward to, and some goals I've been working on and hope to make progress on over the next twelve months. I'll leave you with some of my favorite posts from 2014!

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What are your favorite memories of 2014? Anything you're really looking forward to trying out (or doing again) in 2015? 

all photos copyright Rose Mayo for Blonde in this City