2016: Goals setting

Goals setting has become a mandatory New Year exercise. So let’s see what’s in store for Road Trips around the World in 2016!

Dear Readers,

First I want to wish you all the best for 2016.

May this New Year bring you all the travel experiences you wish for and above all, may you all be your happiest, healthiest, delicious, mischievous, curious, adventurous, loving & caring self!

Miss Coco

As I told you in my year in review post, goals setting on New year isn’t my thing! Like most people, I tend to make big promises to myself I can’t keep. The issue with New Year’s goals is that most of them are decided lightly, maybe with a glass of Champagne at hand, without any planning around them. Hence, they are bound to fail!!

So this year, I decided to manage goals setting as a process and take some real time to analyse, define a plan and clear actions that I can easily act on. Remember, goals have to be S.M.A.R.T. i.e.. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant/ Realistic and Time bound.

Oh! I got to be careful to not sound too boring!

1 – Travel Goals Setting

There are so many places in my Before I Die list that’s it’s hard to decide on a realistic list for the year! However there are 2 destinations that have been on my high priority list and so they are on for this year.

Destination 1: Petra in Jordan.

Hopefully, I will be able to organise a week trip in April or May. This won’t be a road trip but that’s ok!

Destination 2: Yucatan in Mexico.

I have been dreaming of visiting the Yucatan peninsula for a while now. I’m a big fan of Maya culture. My love of architecture and history goes beyond castles, palaces and churches, I love pyramids too!

This trip will hopefully be our longest road trip to this date as I’m considering spending at least 3 weeks on the road and hopefully driving from Mexico to Tulum…. This will take some planning!!

Other possible destinations

Other than those 2 big trips, I am pondering about a road trip and lots of hiking around the Meteora in Greece.

We might make it to Togo for a very special event and I’m very exited about it!! And we might even have an opportunity to go to Rio for the Olympics… but let’s not jinx it!!

There are loads of other places I want to go to. Bali is amongst the top priority list as well as Iran, but I got to keep the list realistic!

Weekend gateways

In terms of weekend gateways, Berlin will most likely be the first. Probably for Valentines day! But hush, hush, don’t tell Mr A.!!

I’ll be heading to London more often this year… more on this below. Yep yep hurray!!

We’ll be lucky to have a few long weekends in spring, so Transylvania is definitely on the list for this year.

Other than that, I’ll keep it flexible and see how it goes.

My biggest challenge? Planning it all!

Too often, we (yes we not just I!!) are waiting for the last minute to make the reservation for our plane tickets or our hotels. Most time, we’re lucky enough and it’s all working out ok. But it’s obviously not always the case…

The other issue we often have, is too many commitments at the same time. For example, we ended up being away every weekend from end of October to Christmas. Although it may sound great and we did enjoy, it was exhausting. We much prefer when commitments are spread around the year, you know something like, one weekend at home, one weekend with friends or family, one weekend away in a new destination and repeat!

So my biggest challenge, this year, is to plan more and better!!

In the coming days, I’ll be buying a huge calendar and I will be:

marking all the important dates like Birthdays we can’t miss, family stuff, work commitments, etc…
highlighting all the long weekends
starting to plan our trips for the year
booking trips at least a month or 2 in advance instead of a week as usual!

I know it may no look like much but it’s a big step for us!!

2 – Work goals setting

2015 ended with a great new role for me. It’ going to take a bit of time before I adjust to my new responsibilities and before I find a way to organise myself to make it all fit in comprehensively and efficiently.

Planning, planning, planning! That’s a goal on it’s own!!

Now what is more relevant to you is what’s going to happen with Road Trips around the World, so let me tell you 2016 is going to be a big year as I have lots of ideas to implement and lots of things I want to achieve.

Regular updates

There will be a lot more amazing posts 😉 about the great destinations we’ve been to, the UNESCO World Heritage sites we visited as well a few more castles! I have still so much to catch up on that it can take me more than a year to write them!

But I also want to share more tips on road tripping, safety, useful things to have… all of these with an eco-friendly attitude in mind of course!

A few cooking-on-the-go tips and recipes might be brewing as well…

Goodies

There will be more pocket guides, more hand drawn maps showing you road trips itineraries, like this one which was the one that started it all. There will also be new things like hand drawn postcards.

A huge challenge will be to write a monthly newsletter! Yes it’s coming! You’ve been quite a few to subscribe and I’m truly honored to say the least, but you probably noticed that nothing happened after filling up the form and clicked the subscribe button. That’s because, I have no clue how to handle it from there! Sounds silly, I know! So I’m going to learn and will send you a monthly newsletter to fill your mailbox with joy and beauty!!

And yet again, my biggest challenge is… planning it all!

And yet again, my solution will be to use my big brand new calendar to set clear deadlines for all these things.

As mentionner above, because of my work, I have to wait a bit before setting things in stone but in a few weeks, once I have a better view on how things are going, I will tell you more about all these plans.

3 – Life goals setting

As I told you in this post, there are many things I like to do when I’m not travelling which include drawing, painting, reading, creating things, repairing things… Being there for my family, seeing my friends… Yes drinking wine is amongst the things I also like but what did you expect? I’m French after all!

So what are my goals for 2016?

Photography

Finish my photography classes and officially become a professional photographer is a must and I will make it happen. I started taking photography classes in London 2 years ago now but unfortunately last year, I wasn’t able to continue. This year, I got to fit the rest of the classes in my schedule, hence some regular trips to London, as I told you above!

Languages

I want to learn Spanish before going to Mexico. I’m not expecting to become fluent in just a few months, but I want to know some basics.

It’s going to be a real challenge because the language I need for work is German! So I’m not quite sure how I’m going to brush up on my German while studying Spanish… my brain is going to get very confused!!! lol

Taking care of myself

Taking care of myself is mandatory. I’m going to take my yoga practice seriously and that’s not a New year resolution taken lightly, not one of those “New Year, New me” ones. Yoga has been keeping me sane, flexible and fit but there is room for improvements especially in the consistency department!! No, no, there won’t be any yoga selfie on this blog 😉

Other goals

Being organized, more creative and daring and having fun along the way!

Voilà!!