2016 Travel Resolutions

I was thinking about the whole New Year's Resolutions thing and thought I would do one for my travels - just so I can keep the end in mind. I know that it's mid-February already in 2016, but hey we kinda just entered the New Year by Chinese calendar, so I'm totally using that excuse to post this lol.

1. Start a Travel Journal

I mean, this website is basically my travelogue, true, but I think I'd like to keep a handwritten personal Travel Journal to jot down all my thoughts in the moment - I can't really be as candid as I want to on the internet tbh; there are some things people just don't care about or people just tend to get be upset over the smallest things sometimes, especially in today's viral media world.

2. Bring Less

I'm totally guilty of overpacking - I've had numerous occasions where I brought extra clothes or extra accessories (hypergear bag, swimsuits, travelling iron whathaveyou) only to not use them. All because of the "just in case" moments I'm prone to.

In fact, I'm trying to bring just enough clothes & items to bring as cabin luggage (which would totally save a lot with these low-cost airlines). This will be the hardest transition, I can tell.

3. Cross Off Things Off My Bucket List

I have a lot of things on my Bucket List and honestly, it's getting longer and longer as time goes on and as I grow older... Don't worry I'm not breaking out into a musical just yet. But seriously, the world is a huge place and there are still so many undiscovered destinations that I can only dream of going to (Mars, anyone?) that it's really hard to stop wishing.

That said, I'm seriously trying to focus on crossing off items off my bucket list next year onwards. (Unfortunately, this year's quota for travelling is nada lol, I've finished all my annual leave planning.)

4. Be More Realistic About My Bucket List

Of course, even if I've crossed off things off my Bucket List, it's going to be hard if I keep on adding unrealistic items into it, heh.

So I'm going to try to be more realistic about my bucket list - that 1-year-round-the-world-trip is probably not going to happen any time soon, so I should probably focus on that when I have more freedom in my work and of course, a more stable financial footing. Malaysia's experiencing some kind of financial instability and we're just worried we're heading into recession at this point, so I'm holding onto my 9-to-5 job which I really do love until it's stable again - so yeah, definitely taking all these things into account when I put down items in Bucket List.

I know the Bucket List is supposed to be a wish-fulfillment thing, but if you're going to be unrealistic about it, you're gonna get disillusioned real fast.

5. Get Out of My Comfort Zone

I've only recently started to travel alone, and that solo travel took me to Japan last year. I ended up loving solo travelling and went solo for a couple of days in Iceland and in Amsterdam. Now that I know I can do it and that the only thing stopping me was me, I'm thinking that I should get our of my comfort zone more often.

I've always loved to travel with friends because I love sharing my travel moments with them - travelling solo didn't cross my mind until I could find no more options and just thought I'd throw caution to the wind and do it regardless. But even then, I think I've stuck to "safer" countries - Japan being one of my favourite destinations, it was natural that I started off with Japan. I think I'm slightly more ready to get out of my comfort zone now.

Being Muslim and a woman and a POC, I think I have good reasons to avoid travelling alone, especially in the less... Muslim-friendly countries. Especially in the current political climate where everybody seems to want to blame everything on the "Islamic" militants (God I could rant and rant about this but this is not a political blog).

My point is this: If I'm going to be scared to travel to all these beautiful countries, I'm never going to shatter all the prejudices or preconceptions that the media has painted about them.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain

6. Blog More Consistently

...Yeah I'm totally guilty of leaving my blog until I get motivated. Thing is, I think going through thousands of the photos I took during my travels and then editing them is hard - writing about it is harder.

I always like to have a theme to my blog posts - each post might have a different theme even though I'm still travelling in the same country, but it helps to have a theme so that I can set the tone of the post and come up with ideas on what to write. Writing is hard, but I've always loved it. The brainstream-writing that I put out is pretty much spontaneous once I've gotten hold of the theme I had in mind. But that doesn't mean I don't proofread my writing.

Sometimes when I proofread my writing, I would think "omg ugh why the hell did I write that, and why does this sentence sounds like a juvenile 13yo just took over this travelogue?" - but hey that's all good. It's part of the editing process that you kinda have to go through to make sure there are no run-on sentences (I know I have a lot of those I can't help it I just really like run-on sentences ok I'll shut up now), no grammatical errors (hard to avoid, but proofreading at least minimizes it), and no incongruence in the travel details (I'm guilty of this sometimes). This is where a travel journal would really help - any recorded writings would help tremendously rather than relying on your memory (unless you have a super photographic memory, in which case I envy you). Hence my #1 Resolution.

So yeah, I'm trying to break the procrastination-thing so that I can blog more consistently this year, hopefully.


So what's your 2016 Travel Resolution?