it's a wrap - reflections on the past decade

​It’s hard to believe that not only is this year drawing to a close, but also the 2010s.  I’m going to be turning 40 next year.  Yikes!  Here’s a summary of major life events during my 30s. 
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• In 2010, I returned home to New Zealand after living and working in England and France for five and a half years
• Soon after that, I had a psychotic episode out of the blue and in 2013 I was diagnosed with schizophrenia
• Over the past decade, I have also been battling with depression
• My condition impacted on my ability to work, but from 2015 to 2016, I managed to return briefly to practising law at Bell Gully in Auckland
• My father passed away in June 2012 after having a stroke
• Soon after, I started gardening, on a small scale at first when I planted an oriental lily called Hot Spot in dad’s memory.  Over the past seven years, I have developed our garden and created an urban homestead with vegetables, fruit trees, herbs and flowers, making us almost self-sufficient
• I started a gardening blog called Anita’s Garden in 2017 and that developed into In the Circle, an online lifestyle magazine in blog format covering a range of topics, such as health, fitness careers, fashion and beauty and of course gardening
• In 2017, I established a boutique gardening business.  I ran a plant nursery from home, held workshops to educate the public about gardening, conducted tours of our garden and started writing weekly gardening newsletters, which I am still doing today
• In 2015, we adopted a stray cat in our neighbourhood who had made a home for herself in our garden.  She is a tortoiseshell and we named her Ginger.  She is absolutely lovely!
• I have really struggled with my weight over the past decade due to the side-effects of anti-psychotic drugs which make you prone to gaining weight
• In February 2016, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.  This was in large part due to the excessive weight gain I had when I went back on my medication so I could work at Bell Gully
• After a decade of long distance running in my 20s, which I started while I was at university, I switched to middle distance running (10k) when I turned 30 and have never looked back.  Despite the ups and downs with my weight, I have continued to run over the past decade and also entered into a number of 10k races, including the YMCA 10k Summer Series, which I participated in last year.
• After a long time, I started swimming again at the local pools.  I did competitive swimming as a child and always competed in swimming sports while at school, but hadn’t swum in ages.  I am really enjoying it and hope to do a lot more of it in the future
• I fell out with my best friend after she went behind my back and set me up on a date with a guy without asking me first.  I was so upset with her that I didn’t speak to her for two years.  Recently, I reached out to her and told her that I forgive her and asked if she wanted to be friends again but I never heard from her.  Inspite of this, I’m really glad I did this because it brought closure to the hurt I had been feeling from what she had done to me.  I have moved on and so has she.

I’m quite proud of myself as I feel I have a lot to show for the past ten years.  They were certainly not without their challenges.  Here’s to another good ten years!