Self-reflection time!
With only a few days left on the clock until new years eve, I feel the need to look back on the past year. This year is one that I will not take for granted though, despite the pandemic still present, just like the year 2020, our 2021 was not one where our lives, in general, got worse. If you remove the annoyance of restricted life and the traumatic miscarriage, it wasn't that bad this year. Let's look back on my personal 2021.
2021 started with a bang!
We had no idea that we had received the Uni airdrop until my boyfriend was actually looking to buy something via Ethereum and noticed a claim button on top of the screen. When I asked him to check what it was he was like "Nah, that's just another thing that will cost 10 bucks fee to get it, never mind". Imagine that, we were whining around a 10 bucks fee at the time, because yeah, Hive is free, so we're spoiled! Look at the gas fees now! Little did I know that only days later, I'd be paying a 25 to 50 bucks fee without thinking about it to move coins on Ethereum, lol.
That claim button he didn't want to click on, was the famous Uniswap airdrop that was worth 2000 bucks at the time. Gosh, I wish I was like 
This year couldn't go wrong!
Car paid with crypto earnings
We mentioned that we kept making fun and saying our car had just been airdropped. I do wish it was that simple because even though we had the funds to buy one in that price range now, there was no decent one to be found. It was quite a shitty experience hunting for a car in this country, my gosh. As months passed, we decided to keep the funds moving and try to make more of the funds so that we would have some crypto left once cashed out.
This went quite well, we jumped in on a few calls from someone and these bags made nice profits. I didn't want to sell too quickly, so, unfortunately, a lot of the big profits vanished with the crypto dip we all remember like it was yesterday. I feel stupid for cashing out only 500 bucks that day because only hours after I did that, the dip was bad and we saw a big percentage of the value go up in smoke. Ouch. Lesson learned: take profits, and take a bit more profits if you know you need a bigger bag of fiat soon. Never trust the markets to be up in a few weeks, lol.
Have to mention here that out of all the projects we bought into, the farming on Cubdefi from 
Noted, take profits!
Diamond hands in the making
I do admit that this dip may have been the best lesson in creating diamond hands as well. This was the first moment in my crypto journey that I did not let fear take over and panic sell. I accepted the fact that I needed to cash out more coins to get the amount of money needed for the car and felt shitty of course looking at the portfolio value because, during that long dip in the market, I did not have the option to buy back into projects at all. Money was needed in the real world, so I could only sit back and watch it happening.
I remember that every time when there was a little bit of green in the market, soon after everything would turn red again. Me wondering how low can it all go. I just kept saying to myself: never sell the falling knives or buy the shooting stars. Patience, this is not the day. I only sold something during those months when I could not avoid it. I'm quite happy that this is the outcome of that horrible dip we thankfully overcame by now, but it's still feeling like it was yesterday.
And still, I felt excited to be part of this journey thinking about when crypto has been adopted by the masses in the future, as we already learned so much during these few years.
Crypto, a bumpy ride
More fiat, more crypto
As our financial (fiat) income had gone up this year, I had more options to keep the crypto earnings in crypto instead of cashing it out. This gave me so much more space to ride the waves, sometimes selling something at a high point but waiting for a low to buy back into another coin. It has been a true blessing that this is now possible. It makes it so much nicer to sell and buy stuff if you can do it when it's a good time to do so rather than having deadlines in fiat that need to be taken care of.
Recently, I even started to send savings to Nexo and stake it for a fixed term. I'm now adding weekly fiat payments so that it won't sit still in my normal bank account without earning interest. I don't like to put all our eggs in one basket and for me personally, fiat savings are something I need to make sure our plans to move back to Spain won't vaporize into thin air if the market decides to crash. The little interest in these short fixed terms is not even worth it yet, but I know if I can keep this up, over time it will add up. Instead of needing all these funds for our move, I'm probably going to try to keep most of these stakes active and add money for the move otherwise. I love seeing the amount grow especially if I think about the amount in a few years.
Stake it till you make it!
2021 wasn't always full of sunshine though
In September I discovered being pregnant, with the first shock, soon happiness and excitement took over. I had to process it for a bit because of our plans to move to Spain in 2022. I was afraid that my demand of having private prenatal care (otherwise I would not dare to continue the pregnancy here) and giving birth in a private clinic would interfere with our emigration plans. When I had all the finances figured out, made a plan to make it happen, we were 100% happy and I felt great. I haven't thrown up once! Which was nothing like my other pregnancies.
The first appointments in public care were a true horror, and that only confirmed my lack of confidence with my medical history to go forward in public healthcare here, I would be scared for me and the baby. When the intake at the private clinic was behind us, only a week or so was left for my next (and last) appointment in private healthcare as I needed to be there for the results of my pap smear anyway. I was so happy to finally meet a young and friendly doctor who spoke English and was at least 7 months pregnant herself. She was the kindest person I'd encountered in this building until that moment and I was happy I didn't have to deal with the other horrible doctor anymore.
But during the ultrasound, she kept looking and looking and moving and I heard no heartbeat. My instinct felt it right away, this wasn't good. She felt so bad for me, being pregnant herself these moments must be hard on the doctor as well. I was told to go to the hospital if the miscarriage didn't start within a week. That was something I wanted to avoid at all costs, so I read a lot about the pros and cons and possible risks. The conclusion was soon clear, for me it was a higher risk of the surgery in the hospital so I was going to wait as long as I felt I could, without any alarming health symptoms.
It took weeks before it started, and weeks to complete after it started. It was one of the most traumatizing experiences in my life, but on a totally different level than the other traumatic events, I've experienced. It took me some time to get back to feeling ok again. I honestly think that I'm not ever going to be ready for another try again. But we'll see how life goes next year.
I do feel relieved that my body was able to take care of this on its own, and that I didn't decide on the easy way, it's probably better for my healing process.
One of the most exciting changes in my 2021: Hive doing so well
The fact that Hive went up from 11 cents to currently $1.87 (we all know it had a higher ATH recently) is something that makes me super excited. Today it's not only that I have a platform to publish my content, but it's also that I can feel in every fibre of my body that $HIVE is going to the moon. So much great stuff being built on Hive, the community spirit and support of each others content, I feel super excited for January when the snapshots are taken for some airdrops and with the release of these things, it can only go up from here, can't it?
These positive changes along with more funds coming in have made me decide to build my stakes on Hive, as I can see it will benefit me greatly in the (near) future. I have no doubt in my mind that we are part of something big and have a huge advantage over the normies that yet have to discover the world of Web3.0!
Long-term vision activated.
This is going to be a priority soon: Making plans to move to Spain
We have gone back and forward with our plans for a few years, probably since we moved here we have thought about the next step as this was never the end station. We've gone from staying in Europe to exploring South America, Asia and even Australia. In the end, we both felt that Spain was going to be the best option as I don't want to be on the other end of the world in the future when I do have the opportunity to re-connect with my two older children again. I just can't see myself settling somewhere that far away until that has happened. And even then, I'd probably feel more comfortable with having a second home somewhere in another continent rather than fully living there for the next 10 years or so. Never say never though, but for now, the plans are made, and we'll stick to them.
The plans aren't set in dates yet and many things still need to be researched to make sure we aren't going to get into any trouble and have all the right documents etc. I'm first going to focus on the business part and school for our daughter. Health insurance and a house etc will be less complicated probably because finding a school while living somewhere else is one of the biggest concerns to me. I have to connect with them and make sure things aren't going to be as difficult as they were here.
It's also going to be a challenge to get things in motion here once we do know when we can leave as nothing can be dealt with from a distance, and to me, those last 2 months before the actual move is the most stressful to think about. I try to tell myself, you left your home country with a baby once, and only a few suitcases, in a very stressful situation, if you managed to get through that, this is easy.
WAGMI, We Are Going To Make It!
Pushing myself to do better
Recently, I've proven to myself that I can produce a lot more than I usually feel I can. I just needed to see it for myself again to actually feel it. Therefore, I'm changing some things in my daily habits to do better and making sure I make the most out of my time and in 2022 I will be as efficient as possible, arranging everything around the move, but meanwhile also keep earning and building for our future.
Many things on my to-do list still, many things are still work-in-progress too, I'm aiming to finish a lot of these things in the next year. 2022 has to be the third year in a row that we can see clear growth in our lives. Not only because of the better surroundings but financially and emotionally as well.
2022: Make it happen, girl!
Let's Connect
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My Referral Links:
- Nexo Sign Up Bonus $25 BTC after $100 deposit. Valid until December 31 2021
- Splinterlands
- Free Hive Account