2023 IN REVIEW

2023 has been by far the strangest and the most difficult. I travelled to The Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, Sweden, Slovakia and Romania in a quest to create content to share with you and find a job. It was fun trying new dishes and seeing amazing places.

The company which I was working, Movate, got bankrupt in spring and I spent the rest of the year doing tests and interviewing. No company wanted to hire me in the long run, so I find myself at the end of 2024 jobless although I sent more than 5000 applications. Consequently, I decided to spend maximum 3 months interviewing for all job markets next year as I prefer to help people with my blog posts. If I am not hired within 3 months in a country, I will cease making effort in the respective there and switch to a new country. My decision is to remove 6 countries from Europe in 2024 as it takes too much effort to receive an offer there based on past interviewing experience.

Besides applying for jobs, I spent my time learning new social media strategies and tools (how to create collages of photos, recording videos with myself speaking, editing photos, creating animations in Canva, surveys etc.). I had fun writing a chapter in the compilation book “Ignite Your Courage: Inspiring Moments of Untold Bravery” and promote it. Promotion started during the spring and ended at the beginning of October. I contributed to the promotion of two other books of Ignite Publishing: “Ignite Your Purpose: Enlightening Stories That Will Help You Find True Meaning In Your Life” and “The Sunshine Effect: How to Light Up Your Life With Joy and Positivity”. All the three books went bestsellers on Amazon (“Ignite Your Courage” and “Ignite Your Purpose” are bestsellers in six countries and “The Sunshine Effect” in three countries). It was better than in 2021, when “Ignite the Entrepreneur: Why Entrepreneurs Love What They Do and How They Found Their Success” was number 1 in four countries. I was interviewed in November by Lady JB Owen in the Ignite Humanity Live. It was longer than the discussion for the book launch Igniterama. You can watch the video in which I am being interviewed here: https://podcast.ignitehumanity.life

Moreover, I created several collections for VIDA with patterns made in Canva. Unfortunately, the platform closed in November and I removed the photos from Facebook. You can still see the videos with some items from the collections on my YouTube channel. I am a bit nostalgic about the days and late nights designing of patterns in Canva and seeing how they look on clothes on the VIDA website. I wanted to organize a creative webinar in November or December, but it is unfortunately being postponed for January 2024 due to lack of time. I will show you how to create various items on the Redbubble platform. If you want to participate to the workshop, please fill-in this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8Z7K8BV and I will get back to you via email, so that you know what is needed for the free online event.

Some posts shared across social media included various European paintings (fifty in total, some of them shared in other years), photos and videos from the countries which I visited and avatars.

I prepared an Advent Calendar this month, to count the days until Christmas. I learned about this in Sweden and I wanted to share the winter holiday joy with you. I used drawings with various characters from Sailor Moon and American cartoons. I edited the background and added Christmas decorations, to adapt them to the winter holiday season. It was a lot of fun remembering cartoons that I saw as a child and discovering new ones. I started as well sharing photos from the previous twenty years, which will continue in 2024 as preparing the Advent Calendar took more time than I expected.

I learned to create avatars on Snapchat and WhatsApp this year. I had fun choosing the hair color, eye color, make-up, clothes and accessories and selecting different poses and backgrounds. I am posting my avatars on YouTube, so you can check them here: https://www.youtube.com/@anasmagicworld/shorts Can’t wait for new clothes, accessories and backgrounds!

In terms of targets achieved, YouTube is by far the social media platform on which I had most views. The video with European masterpieces went viral, with 6700+ views. I was impressed with the support received from you. You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Gza-PW5no TikTok is a platform on which I had good results too, with almost 2650 likes and hundreds of views. I am happy as I am a self-taught video content creator and I am getting new ideas with every video that I prepare and share. I have 4800+ posts on Instagram and I am eagerly waiting to celebrate 5000 posts. I will improve my digital marketing knowledge with free online courses and paid ones in 2024. If there is any topic that you’d like me to write about, please feel free to contact me via private message or email.

At the beginning of the blog post I mentioned that I wrote reviews. I reminded of places where I had an amazing time throughout the years and I decided to share my experience with you. I prepared reviews on Google Maps and Facebook and I loved this activity. It’s fun that it is being rewarded with points. If you post photos and videos and provide a very detailed review, then you receive more points. You can check out my reviews here: https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/106941371832049560649/reviews/ I am now at Level 6 and I want to continue contributing. My reviews on Google Maps are in English and the ones on Facebook are sometimes in two languages, to also help people who are not English speakers. I invite you to share things about places which you love as the reviews will help people discover wonderful places which they had no idea that they exist.

I will continue sharing things across social media in 2024 and I hope that you will like my content.

What goals have you reached in 2023 and what plans do you have for 2024? Please share in the below comments.

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