The Totally Doable Bucket List #2 – January 2023 & RECAP December 2022

I can’t believe it’s already 2023! Are you guys feeling the same way? As already announced, I start the post with a review of my Bucket List from December.

RECAP December 2022

1. ✅Going to the christmas market with friends and freeze your butt off while having good conversations and over-sugared children’s punch – I actually managed to do that spontaneously two days before departure.
2. ✅Eating a lot of gingerbread and Christmas candy before I leave (…cinnamon, we need more cinnamon!) – easy… no problem at all! After booking the flight, this point was conscientiously done.
3. ✅Beating the jet lag as fast as possible in early December – well, it went like this… I needed easily a week to get back on track, which is probably also due to age…
4. ✅Meeting new, interesting people – …and of course, as always, also a few crazy ones… so at least I have material for a new series about interesting travel encounters.
5. ✅Having more good, deep conversations – fortunately I have already had some of them, I think everyone has a story to tell, some are just not good storytellers…
6. ✅Jumping into a pool – oh heck, yes! but so what! I had a fantastic pool day in Bangkok waiting for my night bus.
7. ✅Basically 90% of the time walking around as naked as possible – Easy. Day and night average and almost continuous 25 ° C. Love it.
8. ✅In Bangkok, immediately hunting for Sticky Rice with Mango – well, I didn’t find any right away, but I found some really good ones on my last day in BKK, with two very cute, older ladies.
9. ✅Discovering new food and especially street food, which I have never eaten before – oh yes! I was eating my way across BKK and trying unknown dishes worked flawlessly. In Chinatown, for example, I tried a ginger soup with sweet poppy seed dumplings. Definitely a flavor I didn’t know before. There was also a fail, but you should always try new (food), otherwise you just miss way too much!
10. ✅❌Really arriving and finally coming down on Koh Tao – I would say only half-successful… the holidays have not yet let me rest and I was also more “social” than I thought, eating out every night, but a little letting go and enjoying is also part of the workation, there is definitely room to improve…
11. ✅Finally seeing the sea again and feeling the sand between my toes – Tick 😊
12. ✅Watching many pink Koh Tao sunsets on the beach – Also tick 😊
13. ❌Building a snowman or optionally a sandman (I actually did this 9 years ago!) – I just did not feel like it. For this I confidently walked with my reindeer horns on the head on the 24th to the beach, I think this performance can be recognized as a worthy replacement…
14. ✅❌Keeping up my sports routine (the trick is simply to never stop…) – this went quite well so far, except for the holiday weeks. But I try to keep it up. At least, I was pretty consistent with my Strong Nation workouts💪🏻
15. ✅❌Somehow establishing a work routine/ a regular daily routine – …well, I’m not really happy with this, so far, but it will be better soon.
16. ✅Finally launching the blog – you are reading this, so i would say – yes, done!
17. ❌Instead of christmas presents looking for individual, meaningful souvenir gifts from here – I have already looked for it, but have not really found anything nice. So the search goes on…
18. ❌Absolutely not letting Christmas stress and unfriendly people get to me this year – shoutout to my worst customer ever (at least so far), who has managed to extremely annoy me until right before Christmas Eve, leading to the next point…
19. ✅❌being nice to others, even if 99% of the people just before Christmas are just real psychopaths – here on the island, no problem, most people are relaxed and just enjoy their time in the sun. But my new “favorite customer” has managed after a whole tirade of extremely “nice” messages that my tone also became very direct in the end. Not, cool, because I’m a big believer in “be nice to each other”, but that woman was really up in arms and clearly looking for a fight. So I found the Grinch of the year.
20. ✅Avoiding the traditional Christmas fight – flying away helps😂
21. ✅❌Creating a cool Christmas playlist on Spotify or YouTube – yes and no, I already made a cool playlist years ago and there was just nothing to update this year because I only heard 3 songs from it on Christmas Eve anyway. “Let It Snow” just doesn’t work under palm trees, even if some DJs here really tried hard to get people into Christmas mood….
22. ✅Watching bad, shallow Christmas movies to get in the mood for Christmas – well, same reason as above, under palm trees you really don’t want to watch something like that. When packing my bags the evening before departure, however, I had the film “Last Christmas” running alongside in the TV, which was unfortunately not very good (despite Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding, Emma Thompson and Michelle Yeoh!). With that, this point would be formally checked off.
23. ❌Watching my top 3 Christmas movies myself on Christmas Eve – same here, zero Christmas atmosphere under palm trees, so I skipped the point.
24. ✅Going out for a really delicious meal on Christmas Eve – Chuchus Pad Thai Pizza – delicious! A solid 8 out of 10 points. A strangely, good fusion of Pad Thai and pizza that is neither the one or the other, but an entirely new dish. Chuchu absolutely deserves their very good Google reviews. I wonder if I’d eat it again. Probably not, but you can definitely try it without regretting it.
25. ✅At Christmas definitely swimming in the sea – there is nothing like a Christmas dip in the Gulf of Thailand. I just say bathtub…
26. ✅Making (video) phone calls to family and friends at home on Christmas Eve – this has worked surprisingly well. But well, the internet here is also 10x better than in Germany… what a surprise…
27. ❌Finally answering all messages and send Christmas greetings – uhm yes… only partially done. Sorryyyy! I’m still lagging behind, but that’s how it is when you’re busy all day and social and out and about in the evening. But most of my friends know, that I always take time to reply properly😉
28. ✅Gifting myself for Christmas with the pretty dress in the cute boutique around the corner – Done! I love it and wore it on New Year’s Eve. The owner of the store is also sweet as sugar and we found out we met on the island before when I asked her about the “Lost Place” I stumbled upon…. but that’s another story…
29. ✅Eating less “crap” again after Christmas Eve – that worked for about 3 days, but I am confident that it will be better soon. But hey, it could be really worse!
30. ✅❌Still ignoring New Year’s Eve completely and treat the date as it really is – a day like any other, only with senseless bangers and above-average amounts of boozing and thousands of non-keepable New Year’s resolutions – New Year’s Eve itself really does not interest me, but I was invited from my very cool “neighbors” from the hotel to join them for a delicious dinner at Charcoal Bay (eat the seabass when you are there!!!). Afterwards, we went to the beach to chill and having a drink. The “fireworks” – as expected consisting of what felt like five firecrackers – were over after 20 minutes and we rock stars were all happily back in our rooms at 00:30 am. Perfect.
31. ✅Instead of New Year’s Eve just celebrating my Name day this year (google it, it’s true!), maybe with a pizza and a non-alcoholic beer on the beach… – Name day celebration check! But as mentioned above, instead of pizza I had an incredibly good meal in a beautiful restaurant by the sea and minimal fireworks on the beach. Not mad about it!
32. ✅Treating myself with a really nice, nasty Thai massage (with literally trampeling on me!) – I even had already two, can draw a direct comparison and unfortunately also report a slightly unpleasant story about it. But the massage on Koh Tao was very good. For my taste, the lady could have done it even stronger, but to be fair, yoga and flexibility helps when she stretches and bends you a few times. Where others probably already howl I layed deeply relaxed there and let her literally knot me like a pretzel. Wonderful!
33. ❌Properly starting to meditate again (until I left I meditated every day, then I fell off the wagon…) – so far the fail of the month.
34. ❌Taking short but regular yoga breaks from the desk (my back supports this idea!) – there is also still lots of room for improvement. A short pre-bend every 2 hours or a downward facing dog doesn’t count as a yoga break. But my best online friend Adriene will fix that in January. There will be an extra blog post about that soon.
35. ❌Basically walking/ moving more to compensate for sitting so much – this will also be better in January. So far I’m walking all my routes here, but my radius is also still quiet small.
36. ✅Pizza! For more variety in my diet here, just my beloved pizza, instead of always Thai Food – Big shoutout to Claudio and his pizza! This was actually very good and quite authentic “Italian”, even if I strongly doubt that there is a Claudio at all or Claudio is simply times a Horst or Gary, who comes from Münster or Manchester and not Modena. My expectations were therefore clearly exceeded and I will definitely get some pizza again from Claudio. Edit: According to the website, there is apparently not only a real Italian Claudio, but even an Italian Stefano😂

If you are familiar with the Bullet Journal planning method, you know that you can postpone goals you haven’t accomplished to a later date. That’s why a few of the December goals can be found in January.

Januar 2023

1. Extending my visa – I will probably do this soon, time is racing and I haven’t had much of the Vacation part of Workation yet, so why not….
2. Doing the “30 Days Yoga With Adriene Challenge” – a real gem, Adriene has helped me a lot with her challenges through lockdown. You will find a blog post soon here.
3. Taking a snorkeling trip
4. Attending a yoga class at the yoga studio next door
5. Finally establishing a sustainable work routine/regular daily routine this time for real
6. Making a masterplan for 2023 (even though life ALWAYS gets in the way)
7. Keeping up my sports routine
8. Work on my arm balance asanas (maybe train towards handstand…)
9. Exploring the island by bike and go to a different beach
10. Basically schedule more day trips or beach trips as a balance to work
11. Being more active and walking or cycling more often down to Mae Haad
12. Exploring Koh Phangan in the middle/ end of January
13. Eating less and less crap (but of course treat myself every now and then)
14. Meditating – for real now!

As you can see, my December list was quite full, but surprisingly I checked off a lot. For January, I deliberately do not want to load up so much. In the new year, some things will change again for me, so I prefer to spend more time with really switch off and long-term planning. Simply come to rest. Sounds like a good plan, right?