 My name is Ile. Today in this video we're going to look back on the year 2021 and then we're going to look a little bit into the future by looking at 2022. Hi, my name is Karmie and today we're going to be looking at 2021 in retrospect and what to expect in 2022? I'm most proud of, I've learned how to set boundaries for myself and also communicate boundaries. I think I'm a person who really likes to be doing things and on the go and working a lot and putting in efforts but I've also learned that I need to balance that out a little bit more and that saying no is okay and it's actually sometimes more productive than keep on doing things. What am I the most proud of in 2021? I just think what I'm most proud of is carried from 2020 when I thought that Staten Treelands was going to be super challenging and I probably will not see top but I'm proud of the fact that I have consistently grown in my craft in how I see things and in how I do things so I'm proud of who I'm becoming or the process of becoming the best filmmaker that I want to be. I think one thing I've learned about myself is I've gotten more comfortable with being by myself and just yeah taking care of myself and listening to what I actually need. I think 2021 was quite a challenging year and I've learned how I can comfort myself, how things, small rituals that I do to keep me grounded, to not worry too much and to take every day as it comes. I don't think I learned anything new about myself. I think my knowledge of self is quite strong and a bit stubborn if I should put it a bit unflinching so I don't think I've learned anything new or accept the fact that if I put my mind to something which I already knew but I didn't know I could enjoy the process as much. Yes so I think I've learned to enjoy the process because I was more outcome oriented. Yes so in 2021 I learned to enjoy the process and effort for me was more than enough than outcome. Yeah I quit my job for my career growth so my full-time job became a part-time job for three days due to Covid and then I luckily found a really nice opportunity in the coffee business which was great to complement it but I still felt that something was missing and especially an organization that I was working for three days a week. I felt I couldn't grow into the potential that I have so I was on the lookout for a long time for what's next and I really put in a lot of efforts, time and thoughts so when the opportunity came I really recognized like this is really what I want, what I've dreamt of. I just didn't know that it was existing so I quit both my jobs that I had and I'm going into a new adventure 2022 with a new job so it's scary but also very exciting so I'm looking forward to that. What did I do for my career growth? I bought more gear. I bought more gear I'm not even gonna lie so I changed cameras when I started this channel from Canon 80D in the same year before the year ended I went to a Canon RP and in less than six months or yeah about six months after using the Canon RP I switched to the Blackmagic Cinema Pocket which I'm using now so and I've gotten a few sound and light and other things that based on learning by doing that I'm coming across so yeah career growth I think for a filmmaker it's gonna be a lot of gear for a lot of a no not a lot of years a lot of gear for the first few years and then you learn how to use it and then you settle into the deeper side of you know story and craft but yeah I'm really learning how to you know also something that I even an idea that I even started so career growth yeah an idea I started even before I started vlogging it's also one of the things that I rekindled in the last year like in a last month of the last year and I plan on actually making it establishing it much more in 2022 so yeah career growth wise buying a lot of gear and challenging myself to do more with that gear in terms of content creation and storytelling yeah I think I've grown a lot in 2021 in taking care of myself so I know that I need to move my body regularly so I either run or I do yoga I did that two times a week and unfortunately my yoga teacher stopped so I have to find a new yoga class but that really got me through 2021 I like the mornings so I've gotten into the habit of getting up a bit early and either doing some yoga meditation or writing and it really makes me feel like the day is mine because I'm starting it the way I want to instead of immediately going on my phone or getting into work stress so that has really helped me I need green spaces as well from time to time just to nature helps me relax so either going to the sea or finding a green space once a month really helps me to calm down and reflect a little bit on everything that's happening so mentally when I don't have any work to do what I'm not doing youtube videos then I switch off and there are some days where I'm just I do absolutely nothing I'll just watch youtube videos learn some more or watch tv or do absolutely nothing so yeah physical health was a bit on and off so I hope that this year can be consistent because I was doing a bit of cycling a bit of gym and a bit of stopping of that yeah mental health I took care of my you know rest and everything but physical I wasn't very consistent so maybe I can improve that I think I'm a very I'm not a very different person but I think I've really grown through a lot of things um I've I think I'm different in in radically finding joy in things especially when life throws up challenges I always thought that that's just something to endure and then after that the joy will come but this year or 2021 has really told me that no matter how hard things are you need to follow your joy and find like relief and ease in some other things um in life uh so that can be activities outside or create a writing space for yourself or you can do really small things that bring you a bit of joy that will help you to fuel through the other challenges and I think I've gotten more comfortable with being by myself so I'm also more comfortable in my own skin I think that's a big difference I think I'm becoming more of a doer than an overthinker yes I'm becoming more of a doer than an overthinker I'm becoming more appreciative of process than results I've said it before so it's it's it's changing my outlook um I'm probably going to watch this video a few months or a year from now and find some things I could have done right the quality might have improved a few years from now whatever it is but it's not going to stop me from doing this video that's what I'm trying to say I said I would do what I can do with what I have now learn from it improve and keep going so I'm more a doer than an overthinker I have an idea I do it I execute I learn we move yes so that's that's much different so in 2022 I think I'm not going to fix was not broken my mantra for 2021 was do learn repeat and honestly this I mean this has carried me this the spirit of that you know mantra has carried me through the first two years of my freelance career and it has rather been growing than static like I see improvement in every sense of the things I do so my intention for 2022 if I would say anything would be being more intentional intention intentional ah you serious being more intentional as in you know with the things that I do so instead of doing more I think I'll not necessarily do less but a bit deeper pay more attention to some other things you know explore more in depth than in quantity yeah yeah so no I don't really like these questions like what is your goal for 2022 what's your intention for 2022 but I think I will proceed with my intention to follow my joy and trust my process I'm moving at the right base and I'm sure there's a lot more to explore this year so I'm excited to discover more things and learn from yeah the things that are coming up in the coming year finally radical joy again so I think the small small things I do for myself so my writing my yoga meditation but also my walks outside and getting out of town from time to time I will definitely continue to do things these things um reading as well it really helps me to you know just ground into the moment and kind of zoom out a little bit um from all the pressures that life can give you um I'll continue to give myself rests when I want to when I can but also I think I'll start looking into moving a little bit more because I was doing a lot of sitting a lot of editing a lot of creating and not enough moving physically you know so I think I'll move a lot more hopefully exercise a lot more I hope I can do that yeah that's that's that's what I want to do in taking care of myself and the thing is sometimes I do it for about three months and then I get more so hopefully I can do it for longer yeah I want to visit so many places so actually in 2020 one of my um how you say intentions for that year was to see more of the continent of Africa but unfortunately that did work out because COVID hits and I didn't get to go anywhere of course I want to go to Netherlands for sure this year to see my family and friends there hopefully Kwame can join me um but it would be nice to see a few other countries especially in the region of West Africa I've never been to Africa I would love to go to Togo um Burkina Faso I would love to go to Senegal um it's a country I've been dreaming of I don't know why exactly but it just has a certain pull to me so even if I can go to one of these countries I would be very happy um and it would be nice to go on a holiday that is not Netherlands because we're always dividing our time between Ghana and Netherlands you often choose to go for me that's home which I really appreciate but it would be nice to go to a place where we are both like in the unknown and explore like new territories um so a proper holiday would be great yeah what places do I want to visit this one if I say it's my wife will kill me you know I'm not a I'm not a places person I like travel but I I think one constant is Netherlands yeah to visit family that's a constant um I think we've seen a bit more of the south especially in Ghana so I'd want to go into the middle belt and north you know experience those places as like the way we do weekend trips or holiday so maybe spend three or four days in the north or somewhere else you know discover new places so internally as I hope we can do that so those are the places in Ghana um Africa wise I don't know so much um it's okay it's it's literally the only place in my mind that I would love to see because it's also very popular is Kenya so that's the only African country so far that I would if I have the opportunity to visit anywhere outside Ghana that's not Europe it would be but yeah Netherlands is a hopeful constant and yeah traveling in Ghana yeah seeing other regions I'll try to be more selective with the jobs that come my way in terms of how they serve me especially with film yeah I'm saying this for film not everything else yeah so yeah that's that's that's it so I had I have a friend who last year had a motto like I'm not going to work hard harder I'm going to work smarter and I think that's something that's stuck by me like I know I can work hard and I know whatever I do I put in the efforts and I try to give it the quality that I think it deserves but I think there's definitely the boundaries need to come in and I need to work a bit smarter so I'm going to say no to hard work but I'm going to say yes to smart work so I'm going to see how I can kind of use my qualities better and then make it easier so give my work ethic also some ease instead of something that you have to like see through and push through and I'm always very excited about learning new things so for my new job I'm gonna learn or relearn because I was really good in university but that's about 10 years ago already um so I'm gonna learn or relearn my French again so that's very exciting I'm very like curious how it's gonna work in my head because then I will have Dutch uh English and French all in one brain so let's see but that would be exciting I would like to um deepen my yoga practice a little bit and maybe I can do some extra courses in specific parts of yoga and maybe someday I would want to do like a teacher training to see how um yeah how I can deepen my practice and maybe one day I'll teach a bed desk more something for the future um I would like to read a lot more uh luckily I have my book club for that and I want to write more maybe even publicly so now I'm doing a lot of journaling and I've been thinking about a newsletter for a long time but I haven't really been able to put it all together so hopefully that will happen this year and I want to be more bold with YouTube so we started this in 2021 or I came in in 2021 um and I've been trying to push myself out of my comfort zone of being on screen and speaking up and you know being convinced that I have something to tell and I think I can definitely build on that as well to be more confident but also be more myself even more um in 2022 what skills will I learn would I like to learn um I would like to learn how to fly a drone yeah I like to learn how to fly a drone um I know my wife is rolling her eyes by now um language wise I think I would also want to learn um two languages if it's not too much but one of them is because Elaine has a new job and it would be nice to help her out in conversation when she's home in practice so I might want to also learn French so that we can actually speak it it will be easier to have somebody to speak it with and if there's room enough depending on how quickly French is learned and how quickly it's picked up if there's room enough I definitely have to have to it's not want to have to learn Dutch yeah so that's another skill I want to learn so yeah and basically improve my storytelling yeah be more deliberate with my storytelling you know and changing a bit of the style and yeah but yeah fly a drone and hopefully learn two languages those are the skills I would like to learn in 2022 yeah yeah so I hope that by the end of 2022 if we do do a review of the year for next year that we'll be able to share some of these things with you if we accomplish them of course you're coming with us on our journey so when we're ready to share what we are learning or we're coming by and how we're going by it we'll share them with you so yeah this is the year in retrospect and looking forward to 2022 I hope you've made up your mind about some things as well and yeah let's do this don't forget to like and subscribe and catch you in the next video peace