I Need A Spa Day

One thing I've always wanted to experience is a super extravagant spa day. I've only ever had a manicure once in my life and it was because a friend of mine worked at a salon and needed some customers to come in. I've always just felt like it was this extra lavish expense I couldn't justify to myself.

This year, though, I decided to forego having a birthday party and have a spa day instead. My birthday's so close to Christmas and often gets sidelined by snowstorms or holiday parties, so I decided to remove the anxiety of "will they show up? will people have a good time?" and just do something for myself by myself for once.

I didn't travel at all in 2017 and so I had saved up some money that I would have typically spent on a road trip, so I decided to book in for a 6 hour spa day at one of the most luxurious spas in town.

I ended up having:

• one hour facial
• manicure
• pedicure
• one hour salt & stone massage
• full body scrub and lotion
• fancy lunch

Honestly, a real highlight was just being able to wear a big fluffy white robe for the entire day.

I have never felt so pampered in my life and while the price wasn't exactly cheap, it's definitely something I'd like to indulge in again some time (in maybe the not so near future as my bank account still needs to recover a bit). 

There's Glitter On The Floor After The Party

One of my resolutions for 2018 is to start writing again; whether it be music, fiction or in this blog, I just need to write more. I found an old notebook of mine from high school and I filled it entirely in a year with poems and songs - I guess that's one upside to teen angst. I can't remember the last time I wrote a song and it's been years since I wrote any kind of fiction, so here's my first attempt at writing more. I spent 2017 trying to pay off some debt (successfully...until some major setbacks landed me right back in the red) which meant that it was the first year in almost 10 years that I didn't leave the East Coast at all. In fact, the biggest trip I took was a one night visit to PEI for a friend's wedding, so I'm hoping that 2018 sees a bit more travel to scratch that itch. Overall, the year was more or less status quo throughout, although there were some exciting moments: My boyfriend and I moved in together into an amazing apartment - the first in a while that I feel like we'll be calling home for a long time, I crossed off a few items from my bucket list (new updates soon!), and had a major change at the very end of the year where I decided to leave the job I had been in for several years for something completely new and different, making the new year even more of a fresh start than usual. The first day of 2018, I looked through some old boxes I had grabbed from my parents' place and one of the items was an autobiography I wrote in 11th grade for a school project. Part of the assignment was to write out what I'd like to accomplish in the next 10 years, and while a few of those items still go unchecked (like visiting Greece and Ireland), quite a few of those I've managed to complete: I did in fact move to Halifax for university, I graduated with honours, I went to Europe, I did a cross-country road trip, I've worked in the music industry. I think 16 year old me would be pretty happy with how things have turned out. So that's what I'm using to motivate myself this year - do what I can to have 39 year old me proud of the next 10 years. I've already started a few things to try to get me closer to some lifelong goals - I've signed up to Duolingo to finally learn how to speak Spanish (apparently I'm already 18% of the way there!), created a concrete budget and savings plan to help me travel to somewhere new this year, and downloaded the Carrot Rewards app to keep me motivated and healthy. So here's to 2018...and 2028.