A WHOLE MONTH. I can't believe January is over, and how much I did this month. Genuinely easily the busiest and most wonderful month of my life for so many reasons.

You can judge my general mood and spirit based on when I post blogs because they always come with some intense burst of emotion, and it's been nice to have a more positive motive to write compared with my last few blogs of 2018.

Vancouver has been the world's biggest blessing, and has mended a lot of stuff I was struggling with before leaving. I've pushed myself in a million different ways, pushing my fitness, testing my time management (I'm still not good but I think I've accepted that being chronically late is a part of my personality), pushing myself into a lot of scary new social situations, and putting myself in genuinely scary thrilling adrenaline fueled situations. I've met people who have restored my sense of self-worth, and demonstrated single-handedly the impact that new people can have in such a short space of time.

I've been all over, a bunch of different beaches, the space centre, art gallery, the lookout, Canada Place (x100), the aquarium, a bunch of parks, a bird sanctuary - this list goes on. I've seen the a million sunsets, a bunch of different viewpoints, walked along the Iona Beach jetty INTO the sunset and back (10k !!!!!), and I saw the Super Blood Wolf Moon over the Vancouver skyline. A FREAKING ECLIPSE!!!!! IN A CLEAR SKY!!!!!! I'm still not over it.

In the past two weeks alone I've had my first ski lesson in the ROCKIES!!!!, went dogsledding and have spent a good bit of time zooming around on the back of a motorbike, and it was all magical, and thrilling.

It's weird to think that a year from now everything will be a memory. Even at the time - when you're flying through Stanley Park in the dark on the back of a motorbike, with the driver's foot firmly on the accelerator, flying past through the trees and past fleeting glimpses of the bright city skyline in the distance through the breaks in the branches - nothing feels real.

It's shown me how much I'm capable of, and how many crazy amazing unbelievable experiences there are here and anywhere else. Life is wonderful, and the more I experience the more I get excited about it.

This blog is short and badly written but I have so much to say about this past month that I don't even know where to begin. It's been better than I could have imagined. The takeaway from this blog is that I urge the very few people that read it to seize every opportunity you get. It could be terrible, it could be the best experience of your life, either way, it's a good story to tell :-)

Lucy x

I've been in Vancouver for a week now!! and WOW has it been a long week.

The downside of mild social anxiety is that large groups of people are overwhelming and often look faceless to me, names and sometimes faces are difficult to distinguish, and that has been what the majority of this week has been for me. Like one giant storm of people, and it's difficult to get a grasp of.

In my first 3 weeks of uni, right at the very beginning, I tried to quit. Completely tried to drop out, for the same reasons as I've described above. I had no idea how to make friends, Freshers events seemed like my worst nightmare (and still are, wish me luck for this week coming), no one from high school was doing my course, and with a crowd of 300 odd students, it just seemed like a faceless crowd. It seemed impossible.

Turns out, it wasn't impossible. I've met the most wonderful pure lovely extraordinary people through uni, and I couldn't be happier, but it took time, and that's what I've had to tell myself this week.

BUT it's not all bad. Like I mentioned in my last blog, over the past couple of years I've become fiercely independent - and it's proving to be a blessing. Although having friends to physically interact and share experiences with is always preferable, I'm confident enough to venture out on my own, and because of it, I've been able to experience things I never would have been able to otherwise.

Travelling on your own allows you to navigate the day on your own accord, you can chop and change plans within a moments notice, you can dart from place to place without a second thought. If you want to see as much as you can that day, then travelling on your own is the way to go AND it's a lot easier to make friends with strangers this way. In one day I was able to have 4 different conversations comparing Scotland and Canada, and as a result I learned about family links and got offered a free coffee.

Spending more time with yourself allows you to discover your own capabilities and subsequent limits in the same way that you would be learning about a friend you would have taken with you. Be your own friend. Learn more about yourself. Push your own boundaries. If, like me - cripplingly so, you can struggle with confidence issues, then this is one of the easiest ways to gain self confidence. Taking ultimate responsibility for your own physical actions, with no one to help navigate in any sense, is incredibly enriching.

I'm not going to pretend it's an easy thing to do - especially for people who feel dependent on others for comfort and security reasons. The beauty of being fairly introverted is that I've become totally comfortable in my own company, and it's just fine. It doesn't happen overnight, and requires work and patience, and maybe the ability to prove to yourself that you can do it; but you can.

Everyone can. Everyone should. Travelling solo means limitless opportunities. Go wherever the wind takes you. (not to quote Pocahontas or anything lol)

Lucy x

My past couple of blogs have been a bit ~ negative ~ and I feel like that's a really bad representation of my year. I won't lie about it, it's been tough; I spent a good bit of the year feeling like I wasn't good enough for anything, suffered loss, rejection and I had my first real experience of grief, and it all took a bit of a toll on my mental health.